


Everlasting Fire

by wanda von dunayev (wandavon)



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood Elves, Goblins, M/M, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-03-13 09:13:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3376025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wandavon/pseuds/wanda%20von%20dunayev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the months after the Siege of Orgrimmar, Lor'themar and Rommath celebrate Midsummer in Quel'Thalas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

Rommath was fashionably late for dinner.

“So fashionably late it isn’t fashionable,” Astalor said upon seeing him outside the dining room. “They’ve already served the first course. What were you doing?”

“There was an interesting astrological configuration this evening,” Rommath said. “I got somewhat caught up in it.” It was a half-truth. There _was_ an interesting configuration, and he _had_ been looking at it, but he had been aware all the while of the time, and anyway it would be lasting for another week.

“Well, no matter.” Astalor lowered his eyes, but there were still creases of irritation on his forehead. “You will have to say your hellos later. The regent lord has already asked after you three times.” He held aside the beaded hangings that covered the hall’s entrance, and they stepped inside.

Rommath could not have been more than an hour late, yet it seemed he was walking in a week after his own funeral. The hall was vast, cavernous when not well lit, and from moulding to ceiling it was gilded. Rommath’s first impression was of a sea of gold: golden ornaments and golden light, golden hair and golden jewelry, golden robes and golden faces. And then, suddenly, a wall of green eyes blinking at him.

He straightened, lifted his chin, and moved towards his seat. _They want me to stumble_. Well, there were things he wanted too, and they could get used to disappointment as he had.

The regent-lord had pride of place, as ever, seated on a raised dais with his lords and ladies fanned around him. Even from a distance Lor’themar looked ill-tempered and uncomfortable on his couch. His back was to the window that showed the sea, which Rommath was sure Lor’themar did not like. He had a soft spot for the outdoors still, a throwback to the days when he was green-kneed, a grizzled warrior with twigs in his hair.

The assault on Orgrimmar had been his last gasp, a ranger’s swan song. He was a prince now, by reputation and name and necessity. And he would be forever more.

Uncle Bedlam was seated to Lor’themar’s right, as always; today Halduron was on his left. Normally he and Rommath flanked him, but a guest as honoured as Bedlam could not be pushed any further away, and so Lor’themar’s advisors had alternated throughout the festivities. Once Rommath would have thought that Lor’themar, ever hungry to please, was merely trying not to give him offense; now he knew his motives ran deeper. There could be no whisper of unrest from Silvermoon’s high-command. Their faces must be smooth as glass, their front fused.

When he climbed the high table to take his seat between the goblin and Tae’thelan Bloodwatcher Lor’themar scowled but said nothing, and Halduron half-smiled, half-smirked: pleased with his shame, but also complicit. Bedlam, however, turned backwards on his divan towards him. His eyes were glittering, which gave everything away. Drunk already. Rommath did not envy the cellars of Silvermoon.

“Lord Rommath.” Bedlam grinned. “So glad you came.” He leaned in, conspiratorial. “We’re going to play _fethesi_. I bought a board and everything.”

Rommath gave him a disgruntled look even as he sat on his own couch. Tae’thelan nodded once and turned back to the golden-haired beauty by his side. “This is not an appropriate place to play.”

“We always play at dinner,” Bedlam said. “Maybe the sweetness of the food will take the bitterness from your loss. And how sweet it was!” He smacked his lips. “A poached dove in lime. The second course will be great, I’m sure. And the third. And the tenth.”

“You have a powerful certainty I will lose.” Despite himself and despite the forced mirth in his words, irritation pricked him. He reached for his own glass, filled with some red-brown drink he did not recognize, and gave it a doubtful sniff. All he could catch on it was yeast and mint. “I have been playing this game since I was six, and I am well into my fifth century.”

“Four-hundred years is a long time,” Bedlam admitted, “yet for a while now your luck has waned, my friend.” His eyes fell on the glass in Rommath’s hands. “Quit drinking now. Your handicaps are plentiful as it is. Give me some sport, first.”

“After,” he said, and placed a hand on Bedlam’s arm. His skin was rough, the green of moss and pine, but his hands were humanoid. The urge to recoil was powerful, but he was a gentleman, Silvermoon-bred, not a brute. “I don’t wish to spend this festive evening on such intellectual pursuits.”

“Whatever,” Bedlam said, eyes sparkling. “You don’t wish to be so thoroughly schooled at your own people’s game. I get it. You’re a proud man. It pains you to lose so often.”

He was not entirely wrong. Lor’themar was listening to them now, though pretending not to, but when Rommath met his eyes he only stared back, coolly, and looked away. _He is irritated at my tardiness_. Lor’themar was always irritated at him about something, and Rommath paid it no more heed than he would the buzzing of a wasp, yet the obvious snub miffed him. _He could have bid me hello_.

The second course was raw rabbit, sliced paper-thin and served on a bed of seaweed and cranberries. It was not Rommath’s first choice, and he picked at it until Bedlam graciously deigned to take the whole thing off his hands. Rommath watched him devour both portions, and filled up on beer instead. The taste was surprisingly pleasant: a hint of oranges and some nut he could not name.

“This is rather nice,” he told Bedlam. “A gift from you, I take it?”

“A gift?” Bedlam pressed a hand across his heart, feigning shock. “No, never. I wouldn’t serve that swill to a dog. I wouldn’t bathe an elven girl’s feet in it. It’s thoroughly undrinkable and foul. I’m sure the cesspools of your people contain things of finer smell and taste.”

 _“_ I would have no idea. I’m sure you’re wrong.” Bedlam was forever denigrating the presents his escort had made to Quel’Thalas. The jeweled buckler that shone like a second sun, given to Halduron Brightwing, was ‘middling’. Rommath’s forty rare scrolls, written in a delicate hand on paper fine as linen, were ‘unimportant nonsense’, of ‘no consequence’, and ‘unintelligible’ besides. And when Bedlam had draped around Liadrin’s shoulders a pearl-white cloak with gold-and-jade clasps wrought in a pattern of leaves and flowers, he had stepped back and looked at it sadly. “Oh, what a shame,” he’d said, sighing. “It seemed far prettier, before the lady disgraced it with her own beauty.”

Rommath was certain it was all pretense, some game of the sort goblins delighted in. Their own appraisers had assured them that the gifts were worth a fortune, and judging by the fact that Bedlam still produced new ones occasionally they had seen only a fraction of the bounty. The goblins were filthy with money, that was known in all the lands, but Rommath did not understand why they were so eager to have it gone. _And why are they giving it to us?_ He could never explain it. Was it solidarity, thanks, pity, or something else? Rommath’s country had fought and bled and died to the Cartel’s benefit when they cut down Jastor Gallywix—but in the end, it was for their own reasons.

Now Bedlam was drawing out from under his chair the _fethesi_ board Rommath had given him on the first day of Midsummer. “Come on, we’ve waited long enough. One game. It’ll be over quickly enough, and then you can drink to cure your humiliation.”

By the Void, he would not be able to get out of this. “The high examiner here might be better sport for you,” Rommath said. Tae’thelan turned towards them at the sound of his title. “He has a natural talent for the game that I lack.”

Tae’thelan smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. Somehow, it never did. “You are too kind. Master Bedlam wishes to play? It’s regrettable we aren’t seated for it. Perhaps the regent lord will indulge you instead.”

Rommath gave him a warning glance, but Bedlam was already shaking his head. “Please. What’s the fun of an instant victory? In games as in sex it’s the build-up that counts, not the finish. I count Lor’themar a dear friend, but I doubt he can indulge me in this.”

Lor’themar coloured, but managed to laugh. Rommath felt sorry for him.

“You are cruel,” he told Bedlam in a low voice when the servers had come out again. This course was more to Rommath’s liking: a rich soup of cream and noodles and slivers of salmon. “The regent-lord is poor at this game, but he’s a master tactician.”

“I didn’t say anything about his abilities or intellect.” Bedlam repositioned the napkin he had tucked into his shirt. “Plentiful, I’m certain. How is it that the man plays so poorly at a game he grew up with?”

 _How is it that you play so well?_ “He did not grow up with it. If he had, I have no doubt he would trounce us both, and you would be less eager to play at all hours.”

If Bedlam heard the rebuke, he ignored it. “Eh, you might be right. My host and lord is wise and great. And how fortunate he is, too, to have a friend like you who defends his honour! I have to say, I’m a little jealous. My people don’t trust so deeply.”

There was a barb in the words, he was sure of it. Rommath studied Bedlam’s face, but as ever he could read nothing. “I will always defend my liege lord.”

In response Bedlam only smiled more broadly, and raised his spoon in salute. Yet Rommath could read what he did not say, what no living man would ever dare say: that his words were worthless little things of no effect. He had sworn to serve Anasterian, who died, and to protect Kael’thas, who fell. He had draped himself in Kirin Tor purple and Alliance gold and fought shoulder-to-shoulder with them against the darkness at the gates of Jintha’Alor, and then he had nearly ripped his clothes in his haste to have those colours off and don Horde red.

 _How fortunate indeed, to have a friend like me_. By Lor’themar’s side, and worth a thousand enemies. Never false, and never doubted, and never there when needed.

* * *

He managed to get through the rest of dinner with minimal unpleasantness, though Bedlam pressed the issue of _fethesi_ at each point. For centuries now Rommath had been a nobleman, and he was used to hiding his heart while being watched—watched with respect and fear in Silvermoon, and, after that, watched with curiosity and desire and disdain in Dalaran. Yet it never got easier.

Shortly before the sixth course was served, Bedlam stood up on his divan. It creaked under him.

“Where can a man piss in this place?” he said. Even over the din, his voice was loud. The lady next to the high examiner giggled, but Tae’thelan frowned. “Lord Theron, I have a powerful need.”

“In the next room over.” Halduron was leaning against the back of his own couch, looking amused. “To your right, just outside these doors.”

“The next _room?_ Maybe I wasn’t clear. I have a _powerful_ need. Is there a bush nearby that won’t object?”

“The bushes in Quel’Thalas aren’t known for being talkative,” Halduron said. “Shall I take you to the garden?”

“If you’d be so kind.” Bedlam hopped down from the divan. “Just a moment, friends. Excuse me.”

Rommath watched them leave, sharply aware of Lor’themar by his side. For a moment it felt as if Lor’themar were studying him, but when Rommath glanced over he was gazing out the window towards the sea. His face was unmoving, and his left eye faced Rommath, flat and unreadable.

When Lor’themar turned to him, Rommath said in Thalassian, “What a strange little man. I like him.”

“I like him. I do not trust him.” They had not spoken that night, but five courses and five rounds of drinks had evidently softened Lor’themar some. He moved so that he was sitting in Bedlam’s place, beside Rommath. “You two have something of an odd friendship. You have little in common, save for your constant tardiness. Why were you late _today_?”

“Your memory’s selective. Have I ever kept you waiting in the assembly?”

“Not in the assembly. You keep me waiting, though.” Lor’themar was drinking a pale wine, and he stroked the stem of his glass. In the warm light of the hall his skin and hair were platinum, hard metal. There was a notch missing from one of his ears, and a fine tracery of scars across his throat, over his bare arms. He was wearing his glass eye tonight instead of the patch, but the long jagged line dissected his face still. “I hope whatever it was was good.”

“It was good for me. I was working.”

“Working, of course.” Lor’themar gave a thin smile. “I thought perhaps you were occupied with a maiden or three.”

Rommath snorted. “Hardly. There are two important outer spheres that affect magical flow, and they formed a quincunx tonight. It happens only once every eight-hundred years.”

Lor’themar’s pale eyebrows rose, even as he drank. When he lowered the glass his lips were wet, and he licked the wine from them with a sort of distracted eagerness. “It is that rare? How can that be?”

“Celestial bodies move at different speeds through the night sky. It depends on their proximity to us. These two are far away, so they move slowly.”

“Strange.” Lor’themar’s forehead furrowed. “Then how is it that we can use the northern belt to find our way north?”

 _That was a good question_. The regent lord was unlettered still, but not stupid. “Constellations do not move. Northrend points towards the same region of the Great Dark at all times. But as the seasons change, some of them pass out of sight. They never rise above the horizon. But you could still see them in Stranglethorn.”

Lor’themar was getting a glazed look in his good eye. _He is humouring me_. The thought was pleasing, but it also made Rommath angry. “I am boring you with this,” Rommath said. “Say it.”

“Not boring.” Lor’themar gave a tired shrug. “This is not my area of specialization, rather.”

“Good. Then you won’t begrudge me a few hours spent studying it so you don’t have to.”

“No. And I don’t begrudge you your little games with the goblin.” Lor’themar raised his glass to his lips again and took a sip, the graceful line of his throat moving as he swallowed. It was not hard to see why the Therons considered themselves the descendants of a dragonhawk. “You’re a kind teacher to defend your student, by the way. I know I have no talent for _fethesi_.”

“You’re not a student.” Rommath could not deny that Lor’themar was slow to pick it up, though, he who had been so quick to grasp the unspoken rules of statecraft. He and Rommath had been playing together for two years now, and Lor’themar’s progress was nearly nonexistent, despite all his coaching. “Bedlam is jovial, but not what I’d call gracious.”

“He has a point. It has been too long since we had a lesson. Perhaps when all this is over.” Lor’themar yawned and set the glass down. He had drained it, Rommath realized. _I’d wager this is more than the fifth_. “Forgive me. The festival this year has been exhausting beyond any memory I have of it.”

So it was for Rommath, too. When he was a child the thirty days of feasting were a thing of delight. His lessons with his grandfather ended at midday, and his cousins and great-uncles all came sailing in from up and down Azurebreeze Coast. When he grew older the joy changed to pride in an ancient festival, his people, his house. And then, after he became archmage and magister both and his responsibilities multiplied, the naked joy had lived on in his children and grandchildren.

It was not just the physical weariness that had weighed him down since Warlady Gorgonna marched her armies up to the walls of Orgrimmar and smashed Garrosh’s forces and seated herself in his chair, nor even the fury that seared his heart when Lor’themar took Jaina Proudmoore’s hand and called her ‘friend’. Those things had worn on him, but the pain was bittersweet: this future was not of his choosing, but least it was one. No, this weariness was older. There were some things not even flame could cleanse.  

Rommath realized he was staring at Lor’themar, who was in turn looking at him expectantly. His ears tingled with embarrassment; it was not like him to forget himself. “Times change,” he said.

Bedlam had returned, escorted by a red-faced, laughing Halduron Brightwing. Lor’themar slid back to his place, and Bedlam took his seat once more. “I just thought of an amazing idea,” Bedlam said. “Your ranger-general said no, but I say yes. Get this. Chamberpots under the table at all functions.”

“I concur with Halduron,” Rommath said. “I say ‘no’ and ‘never’.”

Lor’themar gave him a wry look. “It must be a bad idea indeed.”

“No, you’ll see.” Bedlam groaned as he lowered his bulk onto the chair. “You know what? I’ll make you a gift of the first of its kind. And now that I think, I know just the thing. A cobalt-and-ivory vase of mogu make we found in Kun-Lai, buried among the rubble. Really small and ugly. The gems on it are _so_ mediocre. It’s all full of cracks. Very unattractive.” He took a slurp of his drink and sighed. “Yeah, that would be best. I don’t know why I bothered to bring it. Really, it’s only fit to hold piss.”

* * *

It was near dawn by the time Rommath got away. His eyes were tired from the strain of gold and light and smiling at Bedlam, and he felt over-full and far too sober for his own liking. Even in the Spire’s yard the air was sharply smoky and sweet, and Lor’themar beside him was inhaling bloodthistle from a slender black pipe. Rommath had always found the scent cloying, too close to the incense priests burnt in their operating theatres, but Lor’themar’s use of the stuff had endeared it to him. _It is Lor’themar’s smell. It belongs to him_.

“I feel somewhat underdressed,” Lor’themar said as they watched a couple of magistrixes stagger away, arm-in-arm and laughing.

Lor’themar could have worn a hairshirt and shamed any lord there. Smoke wreathed his head, made him ghostly, a thing of ancient tales. A crown became most men less well. “We’re old military men,” Rommath said. “Leave vanity to the young.”

“So says the sorcerer who recalls when Tirania Starblaze was ranger-general, yet looks like he could be Aethas Sunreaver’s slightly-older brother.” Lor’themar spoke around his pipe, but the slurring in his words was more than that.

“Not with his hair. One of us is a cuckoo’s child, to be certain.” Perhaps there _was_ some similarity between the two of them. Both of them had been highborn, and the upper echelons of Quel’Thalas were so inbred nothing was impossible. “Do you really think he favours me?”

“Perhaps. Share your secret, and I shall take it all back.”

“I stay out of the sun,” Rommath said, and was rewarded with a laugh. _He is drunk indeed._ “And I don’t wrinkle my brow.”

“Now, that is nonsense. I happen to know for a fact that when you’re vexed you get a very marked line between your eyebrows. I have seen you do it a hundred times when we play.”

“You’re wrong. None of your moves are challenging enough.”

“It seems everyone feels the need to slander my skill today.”

Rommath turned away to hide his amusement. “It’s not slander if it’s true.”

“So unkind, Lord Rommath.”

 _No._ He followed Lor’themar along the path, watching two scarlet moths the size of dinner plates chase each other around a cut-glass lantern. _I have been unkind, but never to you._

The garden was a relief after the clamour and light of the banquet hall: submerged in darkness, cool, wind lapping at his ankles and tugging the hem of his robe. The sounds of revelry came from over the Spire’s walls, muted as if rising from underwater. They did a lap together, side-by-side. Closed nightlock nodded from the branches above them, and the golden blossoms of the lotuses Lorewalker Cho gifted them were shadows on the pond.

Yet the moonlight through the branches cast sharp odd shadows, like scythes and swords and blades, and Rommath was uneasy without knowing why. _There are guards everywhere. And Lor’themar is a warrior still_. It was not fear, though. It was something else. The name eluded him.

He knew he should retire. The bloodstar had risen, a clot in the sky, and light burned on the horizon. The air was gentle, though, and the steadiness of their pace soothed him. He had not even known he was so tense.

He must have been silent a long time, because eventually Lor’themar said, “Here, let us sit.”

He expected Lor’themar to lead him to a bench, but instead he seated himself on the marble lip of a flowerbed. Rommath looked at it doubtfully, then swallowed his complaints and followed suit. The flowers were black lilies, with leaves of silver lace and petals of satin, dark as blood. He reached out to stroke one, but Lor’themar caught his fingers and pulled him away.

“Don’t touch that,” Lor’themar said. “They are poisonous. The sap is corrosive.”

 _Of course._ His forgetfulness embarrassed him. Perhaps he was drunker than he thought. “You’re a herbologist now, are you?”

“As much as you are an astrologer. I learn what keeps me alive.”

It was a wise doctrine. He watched Lor’themar as he exhaled again, this time directing a lance of smoke towards the sky. It snaked among the branches before dissipating. Overhead an arm of the Great Dark unfurled, spectral, its twin.

“Here.” Lor’themar held the stem out to him.

“I don’t care for it.”

“I know. But it is good for you, sometimes. A man must relax.”

 _Not me_.

As if he could read Rommath’s thoughts, Lor’themar waved the pipe. The smell of it washed over him in a cloud. “The grand magister must relax doubly.”

Rommath took it between his fingers, hesitant. The gold tips on his nails scraped against the lacquer, and the grip was sweaty. He noticed that mouthpiece gleamed wet where Lor’themar’s lips had touched it, and touching it to his own felt strange—illicit somehow.

Bloodthistle smelled of honey and flowers and magic, but its taste was a wonder. When Rommath inhaled his mouth filled with the sea-salt air on the Isle of Glass; the overripe half-rotten apples that the farmers from Lordaeron brought to Dalaran, so sweet they made his teeth ache; all the wines he had ever drunk, sweet and sour, fine and poor; his first kiss all those endless lifetimes ago in the shadowy alcove at the Upper Academy. It tasted of dreams and sunlight and memory, of joy and bittersweet pain, of innocence lost.

He held it in his lungs. Curls of warmth went through his fingers, his toes, up his arms. His nerves tingled, then one by one all feeling fled, replaced with a warm numbness. To hold this smoke was to hold onto those lost times. _It is all gone_. He exhaled, and the sorrow went with it. _I am a stronger man now. Stronger than Lor’themar. I can taste this and have no part of it._

He handed the pipe back and wondered what it was Lor’themar remembered that he sought it out so often.

“Have you given a thought to lighting the pyre on the final day?” Lor’themar asked.

Under the waves of thistle in his veins, the question surprised him. “What thought is there to give? I’ll be there.”

“I think the warchief may attend. Then again, she may not. Bedlam was evasive. Either way, I will have to go to Orgrimmar after. I have been away too long.” The bowl of his pipe glowed red for a moment as he inhaled, then smoke filled the air between them. “You should wear your hair loose, and leave your face exposed."

 _What is it to you?_ Something sharp touched his spine, low down. He still could not name it. “That is not done.”

Lor’themar’s sucked on his pipe for a moment, eyes closed. “Why? I suppose the hair makes sense. You’re liable to burn it all off. But the mask. Why wear it? We all know what you look like.”

Rommath was quiet, choosing his words.  It had always been custom for the grand magister to hide his face when acting in the role of office. He cast off his individuality, his mortal fraility, the vanities and terrors of his everyday life. _High priest of the arcane._  It was said Theleice Runeweaver went around veiled, and his grandfather Irthalis had worn a golden hawk mask. Rommath remembered it keenly—remembered its terror and beauty. When Irthalis put it on, the kindly old man with laughing eyes died and Erthalif Demon-Slayer was born.

Greatlady Theleice and his grandfather were children of a different era. Rommath had taken up his title in the ruin of Outland, and there had been no time for jewels or glory. He had removed his scarf, folded it, wrapped it twice around his face, and become a stranger. To himself most of all.

“It’s tradition,” he said. “The man and the grand magister never meet. Where one is, the other is not.”

Lor’themar turned towards him, unspeaking. He had expected scorn, or some scoffing remark about the riddles of magi, but nothing came. Lor’themar’s face was as open as a child’s.

Rommath held out his hand, and Lor’themar pressed the pipe into it. Their fingers fumbled for a moment; Lor’themar’s were rough as bark, but warm. This time, the smoke tasted of his lord father Vathecor’s funeral ashes, his late wife’s womanhood, the blood and bile and metal terror that had filled his mouth when the news came of Kael. And beneath it all, faint as fading flame, another kiss, one he had never had. This one tasted of wine and incense, of poached dove and salmon soup, of sweat and bloodthistle.

From beyond his body, he heard himself say, “I don’t know that I could have done what I did, if I had to look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day.”

Lor’themar was silent for a space. “You need a better mask, then.”

 _I do not need more masks. I need to go home._ But his home was a drowned island and burned children, the lost spires of Dalaran, Kael’thas Sunstrider’s hair catching the light. He had no home. Exile, outcast forever he must be, estranged from himself. _No. I am stronger than that, than any of that_.

Lor’themar stood, all long legs and grace. “It is decided. I will have one made for you. There is no need for you to look like a peasant. On the contrary.”

Rommath nearly refused, then stopped himself. “As you wish.”

“I do. What shall I have it cast as?”

“It’s your gift. You choose.”

Lor’themar cocked his head, thoughtful, but there was mischief in his good eye: rare, and welcome. “Some would call a viper most fitting.”

“Would you?” He kept his tone sportive, but the comment stung.

Lor’themar stroked his beard and considered him. “No. Not a viper. I will think on it.” He glanced up at the sky. “The hour is late. I should go, as should you.”

Rommath handed back the pipe and rose stiffly. His lower back was sore from crouching on hard stone, and he wiped soil from his robes. Not his robes of office, at least—these ones were grey silk. Severely cut and somber for the occasion. That hadn’t occurred to him. “Will I see you tomorrow?” he asked.

“At dinner, of course. By my side.”

“I will look forward to it,” he said. For once, speaking the truth was precious, not bitter.

Instead of staying in his quarters in the Spire, Rommath walked back to his apartments with his guards at his heels, though he wished, foolishly, to be alone. His thoughts were a buzzing haze. Around him the streets were gold washed with fire. Overhead the sky was a pale blue sheet. The constellations had dimmed, but the bloodstar was still rising, and behind it all ran the invisible clockwork paths of planets, unseen and inexorable.

* * *

The air was ablaze with dawn by the time he reached his apartments.

Rommath, alone in his tower, leaned out over Silvermoon and let the early morning wind rifle his hair. Overhead the clouds burned, and in the city the pyres had been smoking for days now. Despite the enchanted breeze that wafted through the alleys and streets the heat was stifling. Everything smelled of smoke—woodfire smoke, not the acid smell of the forges or the tang of felfire.

 _A wholesome smell._ It reminded him of autumn in Dalaran, when the farmers in Lordaeron and Alterac around them would begin clearing their lands, or of the winters where Lordamere Lake turned to an iron sheet able to support all the trade between Dalaran and the capital, and the horizon was laced with grey smoke streamers.

He had been there for the coldest winter on record for three hundred years. Even the Alteraci mages had found it trying; for Rommath it was a new feeling. _Hell will be frozen, not burning_. When he went outside the air was like frost-flame, so cold his skin burned even through his furs, and his hands and lips cracked and bled. The chill had sunk into his bones until even inside he was constantly cold: curled in bed, or huddled before the fire with his wife, or walking through the greenhouses. His joints seized up, froze over; his muscles were stiff as if with rime. Breathing hurt. Sometimes he had felt he would never be warm again.

 _And I was right. The cold of that place never left me_.

But he was still sin’dorei; in him there were still embers. He turned away from the city and went inside. This was a festival of fire, and despite the human-loving priests’ best efforts, the grand magister was fire’s patron saint in Quel’Thalas. _They did not stamp it out of me, though they tried. They tried._


	2. Part Two

He dreamed of Lor’themar that night. Rommath was in his family’s estate, and he wore the robes of lordship, cloth of silver and grey. Beneath him the Isle of Glass, Kamin’ia, sloped down to the sea, endless fields spotted with lupines and wildflowers, broken by patches obsidian. Somewhere in the distance a lynx mewled, but it was playful, not ferocious, and his sister was there, weaving on one of the upper towers of the villa. Her eyes were black. Not green.

In this dream Lor’themar was a simple ranger, as he was a simple man. They lay together in the high fine guest tower and cool wind blew through the open windows and stirred Rommath’s hair. That they were naked and abed did not seem strange to him. Nor did it seem strange to him when Lor’themar twined their legs through the sheet and leaned down to kiss him. Or, if it seemed strange, it also seemed right.

The kiss was the same as in the bloodthistle haze, sweat and leather, the taste of his skin. But this one was heat, too, and he closed his eyes and opened his mouth, reached up to grasp Lor’themar’s strong broad shoulders. The tension went from his legs and arms and back, even as heat pooled in his groin and he felt himself hardening.

He pulled away and Rommath was left gasping, his chest heaving, but Lor’themar only grinned down at him: a sideways smile, mischievous and not precisely kind. His eyes were brown. Two eyes. _  
_

He lay back on the divan, tangled in the blankets. When Lor’themar tore the sheet aside the contact of their bare skin was a shock, a pleasure so intense Rommath twisted against him. Lor’themar’s cock was swollen purple against Rommath’s thigh, and he himself felt huge with need, all heat.

He reached down and wrapped his hands around them both, pushing the undersides of their lengths together. Lor’themar’s throat worked; his own breath caught. Rommath stroked them together, savouring the way Lor’themar pressed back against his fingers, forcing himself to be slow. The denial was a torment, but one that gave him pleasure. He was old, and practiced in patience. Waiting was an art.

After a few moments Lor’themar pushed his hand away and caught him by the wrists, leaning forwards so the lower half of Rommath’s body was pinned. He thrust upwards and rubbed against Lor’themar’s stomach, desperate and needy. Then Lor’themar shifted so his own cock was caught between them, and their skin touched again, and Rommath understood. He inched lower, spread his legs a little so they were flesh to flesh.

His skin was slippery with sweat, and Lor’themar slid against him, at once firm and yielding and so solid. “Yes,” Rommath pleaded, not caring that in the emptiness of the isle he could be heard far away. “Yes, there.” He thrust upwards, against him, and they moved together. The pace built until it was near frantic, until Lor’themar was taut above him, until he was sure he would die if he did not come. He bent his nails into Lor’themar’s skin, knowing he was tearing and drawing blood, not caring.

His orgasm came on him suddenly. His back arched and he swore, hips still pumping, staring up at the beautiful, twisted face above him as lights gathered and swarmed in his eyes.

Then there was wetness on his thigh, real wetness, cold and insistent. He woke suddenly. The light seared his eyes, and his skin burned. The breeze that stirred his wall hangings was warmer, and it smelled of smoke.

He cursed and tossed the sheet from him, disgusted. He would have been angrier with himself, only something raw-edged tore through him, too vast to leave room for anything else. Kamin’ia was ash, and the minarets of his childhood were warped, twisted. His family was gone, dead to a one as so many families in Quel’Thalas were. Perhaps it was what could have been. _But it can never be now_. 

Of Lor’themar he would not think, even as he stepped into his bathroom to wash the dampness from his skin. Damnable bloodthistle. His hair stank of sandalwood and flowers from the night before. The memory tastes were long fled, but he still named them. Ashes, sea, his wife. Kissing the regent.

Accursed bloody _bloodthistle_. He should have had none of it.

It was early, though fully bright, but Apprentice Korthira was already in his office when he arrived, laying out her scrolls on the side table where she worked. She shot to her feet and bowed when he entered. Her nervousness was his power. It gave him strength. He was Rommath, high priest of the arcane, and this was his kingdom, not some lost isle of smooth slopes. Not some scarred ranger.

He nodded to her and seated himself at his desk. “You did the calculations, I trust.”

“Yes, Master.” She was chewing one of her fingernails as she spoke. Rommath wanted to tell her to stop. “At three points last night. I was a little tired. I—I hope they’re correct.”

He fought a smile. Nervous indeed. “We shall see. Bring them here.”

She obeyed. The charts were done in a small, careful hand, the astral map neat and the equations tidy. He glanced at the values and saw nothing obviously amiss. “You checked these?”

“Twice, Master. Are they satisfactory?”

“Hard to tell.” But likely so—Korthira was meticulous as any girl of eighteen could be. “You may check them again as we go through it. Bring your scroll here, and fetch Arali’s text from the shelf. I will dictate.”

It was slow, tedious work—Rommath studied the stars only of necessity, not from interest or desire. _The Titans mocked us when They made such distant things masters of magi._ Korthira wrote without complaint, but after only a quarter of an hour Rommath’s throat was sore, and she kept swiping the sweat from her forehead.

The calculations were the worst part, and done, but each celestial body had to be checked first alone, and then against each other. Arali’s _Map of the Heavens and Their Effects Upon Ley Energies_ was dense as lead and dry as sand, and at one point Rommath realized he had reread the same passage on the bloodstar turning retrograde four times.

 _I am distracted._ Korthira was looking at him from the corners of her eyes, as if she knew it too. The heat, nothing more. Yet his mind kept wandering. He thought of the night prior, of Lor’themar’s secretive smile—so rare and so brilliant—of the way the moonlight turned his hair, too, to moonlight.

And when he thought of that he could help but think of the dream. Lor’themar’s hands had been on his waist, between his thighs, and his mouth was at once tender and punishing, all teeth. The memory was as keen as if he’d lived it. He thought of Lor’themar’s lean strong body, the ropes of his muscles, his skin velvet notched with scars. The imagining was enough to make him half-hard, and he shifted, uncomfortable.

Across the table from him Korthira cleared her throat. “Excuse me for interrupting, Master, but are you alright? You’re very flushed.”

He felt flushed, perhaps feverish. “All this terribly exciting astrology, Apprentice,” he heard himself say dryly.

Korthira laughed. “I thought perhaps it was the summer heat.”

“Well, it is no concern of yours.” She sobered, and he leaned forwards onto his elbows, doing his best to ignore the stiffness in his groin. If he ignored it, it would vanish. “Continue writing. Quintus forms an inconjunct with the bloodstar. Arali maintains that this is an inauspicious configuration for contact with the elemental plain. Haleice corroborates this report, but offers that not all stages of the configuration are equally problematic. Degree 150 is to be most avoided. Are you getting this, Apprentice?”

Yet after only a few moments his attention wandered again. He found himself thinking of the dinner that night, and what he would say to Lor’themar. _I will be at his left hand, he realized._ A little tingle went through him, sudden nervousness. He was acting like a stupid boy. He could not work like this.

Korthira was also staring into space, lost. He slammed Alari’s book shut, and she jumped at the noise.

“Enough of this,” he said. “We’re getting nothing accomplished. This is a waste of time.”

Korthira coloured to the tips of her ears. “Master, I am so sorry, please, I’m just a little tired—”

He held up his hand for silence. “Me as well. You were right. The heat.” He leaned back and stretched, watching as Korthira fidgeted with her quill. “Do you have plans for the day?”

“I—I do.” Korthira’s shoulders rose protectively. She was afraid of him, he realized, afraid he was trying to ensnare her. He did not often ask about her personal life. He did not often ask her anything. “I am meeting Magistrix Zaedana this evening.”

Zaedana was a beauty, silver-haired and elegant and graceful. And far too old for Korthira. His sudden protectiveness surprised him. “Zaedana is a powerful and influential woman,” he said. “Was this her idea?”

Korthira blushed until she looked half-scalded. “Yes, Master.”

He studied Korthira for some moments. “Let’s end this session early today,” he said at last. “I’m sure you’d rather be with your lady than me.” Korthira spluttered, but he cut her off. “Oh, no? You covet your time with me? Your capricious, unkind, demanding teacher? That’s what you think, no?”

“I…” Korthira gave an embarrassed laugh. “You are a genius, Master, everyone knows that,” she said. “If you want to be difficult, that is your right. I’m honoured to be your student.”

The words touched him, even as he knew they were false. Magna Aegwynn was a genius. Kael’thas Sunstrider.

He reached over and patted Korthira’s cheek. “You are a promising apprentice. One day you will be a great mage. I will remember this conversation the next time we argue. I advise you to do the same.” He released her and leaned back. “Go. Enjoy your day. Kiss your lady for me.”

“I will think of you as I do so,” she said, impish, then tossed her scrolls and quills into her bag. “Thank you, Master!”

He watched the curtain over the entrance flutter closed behind her, then put his head in his hands.

* * *

When dinner was done that night and Bedlam and Halduron had gone off smoking and laughing, Lor’themar turned to Rommath.

“Walk with me,” he said. “I have need of your skills.”

“My skills are yours to command, my lord.”

Lor’themar looked at him, a line between his eyebrows. “You’ve been sour all evening. What is it now?”

 _It is the Midsummer heat and those damnable planets. It is Bedlam and Brightwing and Bloodwatcher and you. Above all, you._ Rommath plastered on his most poisonous smile. “I have no idea what you mean, my lord.”

Lor’themar gave him an unhappy look, and did not speak as he led Rommath inside. The inner chambers of the Spire were dark, all empty alcoves and unlit wall sconces, and everything empty of people. The silence of it was peaceful, but Lor’themar’s silence was dark, almost sullen, and chilly besides. Rommath was not the only one given to moods, apparently.

He had expected Lor’themar to lead him to his office, but after a few ramps and strange turns through high narrow hallways, Rommath found himself standing outside a handsomely-carved pair of double doors. Sudden fear touched him. Lor’themar’s private quarters. He should not cross this threshold. It was too intimate. He must bring the formality back to their interactions before he got carried away.

But, distantly, he knew it was too late for that. He made no noise of complaint as Lor’themar led him in, and Lor’themar was seemingly oblivious to the tension that locked Rommath’s joints with each step.

The light here was dim, but the windows were open and the smell of the sea came in. He was relieved when Lor’themar took him to the sitting room and raised the lights with a gesture of his fingers. Papers were strewn everywhere, cloaks and robes thrown over the backs of divans, and three black cats were sleeping in a pile before the folding screen.

Rommath sat uneasily on a hard chair, while opposite him Lor’themar sank onto a couch, legs splayed. Thoughtless and indecent. Yet still he looked at the curve of his codpiece, and hated himself for looking. One of the cats woke, and it sauntered over to Rommath, threaded around his legs and butted its head against his ankle. He bent to scratch it between the ears, pleased when it nosed his hand.

Lor’themar was watching him. “Can you decode dreams, Grand Magister?”

He nearly started, but he managed to draw a shield of steel around himself first. “Dreams are meaningless largely. The flights of your mind. Only seers have visions. You are no seer.”

“I know that.” He rubbed his chin. “I think I need something to help me sleep.”

“Wine. Lovers. You have both in abundance, I am sure, or do you need me to get those for you, too?”

Lor’themar was not amused. “I did not call you here for your acerbic little witticisms. You can brew me something, I hope.”

He could, though he was not sure why Lor’themar required the grand magister of Quel’Thalas for such a thing. Any minor priest would have served just as well. Perhaps he did not trust the priests. _And he trusts me? Folly._ “I can, yes. Do you have ingredients and something to heat them on?”

“Behind you.”

It was a small and paltry assembly, a few standard herbs and seasonings, and a battered burner that looked as if it had survived a war. Perhaps it had. Hardly what Rommath was used to, but he would make do. Rommath the Resourceful.

He lit the stove with a spark between his fingers and spoke as he worked. “You mentioned a dream. Tell me.”

“There is little to tell.” Lor’themar sounded thoughtful. “There was no order to it. A dream, as I said. But dark, very dark. I couldn’t see anything. I was lost, and all I felt was terror.” He paused for a moment. “Truth be told, never have I been so frightened.”

There was a jar of milk on a bed of ice, and a few bottles of wine as well. More than a few. He sifted through them, grimacing. Most were open and sour, but one sweet pale red still had flavor left to it. Rommath set the milk to heating, then turned back to Lor’themar. “And this happens often?”

“Sometimes.” Lor’themar examined his nails as if he actually cared about their appearance. For the first time in a long time Rommath realized that the regent-lord, his prince and master, was far younger than he: his back was straighter, and his face had fewer natural lines. His job had aged him young, but not so hard as Rommath’s job had aged him beneath the spells and illusions.

“When?”

The cat that had insinuated itself into Rommath’s good graces leapt up on the couch next to Lor’themar and lolled onto its back, paws raised. Lor’themar stroked its stomach and did not look up. “You will not… This is very odd.”

 _The times for me judging you are long gone, though I would gladly bring them back._ “Tell me.”

“Very well. For a long time, it did not happen.” Lor’themar’s fingers curved into hooks, but his movements were still gentle. “Since Orgrimmar. I do not know why. I felt alive throughout the whole fight—and strong. Stronger than I had felt in ages. It was good to fight once more, as it was in Pandaria. But afterwards.” He pressed the fingers of his free hands into his eyes—the real one, the glass one—as if they pained him. “When they started lighting the fires, I had to leave. I felt dizzy and sick. I must have looked a proper fool.”

The burning bodies. Of course. The smell. To feel another’s pain as his own was not something Rommath was accustomed to, but now it came, and so softly keen it stole his voice. He would not have known what to say even if it had not. High priest of the arcane. He had to remember that. _This is my master, not my lover or son._ It was his wisdom Lor’themar wanted, not his compassion. A pity, then, that, he had no wisdom to offer.

“That is hard,” he said. It was an empty to thing to say, of no comfort, yet his own tone surprised him. His was not a voice accustomed to gentleness. Or perhaps he was just not accustomed to hearing it.

Lor’themar did not seem to be listening. “Liadrin has suffered. She said before. Prayer helped her, she said that as well. Perhaps I should consider it.”

Rommath swallowed his scorn: another familiar taste, and bitter as hell. “Liadrin is a fool. Time has healed her, nothing more. I was wrong earlier, neither drinks nor bedmates will solve this. You can pray to the Light until your knees are bloody, it won’t comfort you any.”

“It comforted her.”

“Because she is…” _Weak. Stupid._ Somewhere, he knew that she was neither, and the grand magister did not lie. Not anymore. “A believer. Are you a believer, Lor’themar?”

Lor’themar gave a rueful chuckle. “Not precisely, no.”

“Nor am I. So let’s spare ourselves this nonsense.”

“Do you have them, too?” Lor’themar paused in stroking the cat to look up. “Or are your dreams different?”

“Different.” _But I have dreamed as well._ He refused to follow that thought, but it proceeded without his permission. His lips, his bare skin. At least Lor’themar had closed his legs now.

Rommath turned back to the burners to avoid looking at him. The milk was starting to curdle; he scraped it off with a spoon and discarded it, then stirred in the wine. Cinnamon, honey, anise. The smell of each was familiar to him. “Bad dreams are our inheritance.”

“I am no stranger to bad dreams.” Lor’themar grunted. “These ones… they are something more.”

“Just the terrors of your mind.” Just, he said, as if that weren’t enough.

“Some.” He paused. “Not others.”

Could it be?  No, impossible. Wishful thinking, that was all. He made his tone hard. “Has the Light come to you in the form of a mortal? Is it time for you to pick up your bow and go crusading with Liadrin? She’ll be happy to hear it. Best start knitting your hair shirt. I doubt she’ll share hers.”

“You are cruel to mock her so. Hers was a hard road.”

“No harder than mine or yours.” Steam was rising from the mixture, and Rommath took it from the burner. The scent calmed him enough that he could turn back to Lor’themar. “Your cup.”

Lor’themar held it out, and Rommath accepted it, studying the ceramic with distaste. The golden lip was chipped, the porcelain cracked and dirty on the inside. “Truly? This is filthy.”

“It is clean, but stained.”

“It’s disgusting. You are regent.”

“Then your regent commands you to use his favourite mug.” His tone was imperious, but there was a twinkle in his good eye. That, more than the command, swayed Rommath. He poured the mixture in, then handed it back.

“My thanks.” Lor’themar sniffed it. “What is this?”

“A posset, to help you sleep. It may be sufficient. If it isn’t, I will get you something medicinal. Roots, powdered. You mix them into a glass of something warm. Not alcohol, unless you want to sleep forever.”

Lor’themar took a cautious sip. “I didn’t need to go to the grand magister for a hedge-witch’s remedies.”

“Then next time go to a priest. But hedge-witches have knowledge.” He seated himself on the arm of the chair and watched Lor’themar drink. It was not like him to ask for help of anyone. "You didn’t feel poorly on the Isle?”

“No.” Lor’themar’s gaze was distant. “No, on the contrary. I have seldom felt so well.”

Rommath turned his worry to contempt. “At least you thought so. I thought the Isle was a pit. Even the air was foul. We should have scraped every living thing from it and sunk it into the ocean.”

Lor’themar lifted his head. His eye burned with recrimination. “We are not barbarians.”

“Then perhaps we should be. Barbarians live and thrive. Do we?”

“Must we go over this every time? We have survived much. Is that not enough?”

“Surviving is not thriving.”

Lor’themar looked at him for a moment. “Perhaps you’re right.” He drained the cup. “I feel weary already. Maybe your witch’s remedy will work.”

“Witch. Is that supposed to insult me?”

“Does it?” He tossed the cup down onto the table between them. “Pay me no heed. As I said, I’m weary.”

Rommath made as if to rise. “Will I take my leave?”

“No, stay.” Lor’themar waved a hand, and his rings briefly flashed with reflected moonlight. He wore far fewer than was fashionable, but still more than he had five years prior. “There is something else I would discuss with you. I do not quite know how to say it.”

Rommath drew in his breath sharply—more sharply than he’d intended. “What?”

“Calm yourself. Good news, I think. I believe the warchief’s intention is to offer me a place on her inner council.” He folded his long, graceful legs under him. “If she does, I don’t see how I can refuse.”

“I see.” A thousand half-formed thoughts swarmed through Rommath’s head. _This is good news indeed,_ he thought, but also, _Then you will have to leave us, and me._  “What do you wish of me, Lor’themar?”

“If I go, and if she offers, I’ll have need of wise councilors. Councilors I can trust.” He tugged at his lower lip with his teeth. When he spoke the words came out in a rush, as if he were embarrassed. “Will you come with me to Orgrimmar?”

 _Yes_ , every part of him said at once. _Yes, a thousand times, yes._ His place was by Lor’themar’s side, wherever he went: to Orgrimmar or through the Void. Once he had let Kael slip away, knowing as he did that it was a mistake. He had sworn to guide him, to protect him, and failed—to his own grief, and the grief of his entire nation. Never, never, never again.

But he was too practiced to simply blurt the first thing that came to his mind. “I’m honoured to be asked,” he said, aware of how wry he sounded. “Who will hold the regency if this comes to pass?”

“Halduron in name, but I intend to give signatory powers to Elsia and to Voren’thal, once he returns. Halduron is popular with the people, and with some guidance he will be wise, if a bit rebellious. Elsia can ensure he toes the line.”

“And Voren’thal is wiser still, too old for ambition, and he’ll keep the magisters content.” Rommath regarded him, almost wistful. “Halduron spoke truly, when he said you spoke like a king.”

Once, he knew, the words would have troubled Lor’themar. Now he merely shrugged. “Let’s hope the warchief thinks likewise. I may be wrong about this entire thing. I’ve had ruder surprises.”

Doubtful. Gorgonna favoured Lor’themar, that was known, as was her guilt at Hellscream’s treatment of the blood elves. “If I come with you, who would you have serve in my stead?”

“I have considered that. A loss to the magisters’ ranks, to be sure. You should choose. They are your men.”

“Hathorel,” Rommath said immediately. “Vesara could do it as well, but I want her with me. If I were to go.”

“Not Aethas?” Rommath snorted in response, and Lor’themar smiled. “Be careful. He will take that for an insult.”

“Please. I think we’ve all seen as much as we need to of Lord Sunreaver’s leadership abilities.” Still, Lor’themar raised a good point. Aethas was extremely touchy, and liable to mistake the entire thing as a personal attack. “It might be best to bring him, too. Call him an advisor as well. Keep him out of trouble.”

Lor’themar stretched and stifled a yawn. “So you’ll come?”

“I didn’t say that.”  He would, though, after he had given the appearance of deep thought. “Let me think on this. I will let you know before you leave.”

“Then do not think too long on it. The orcs move faster than we do. And I know you like to pick everything apart.”

“And yet you wish me to come with you.”

“Yes,” Lor’themar said, a note of finality in his voice. He rose and clapped Rommath on the shoulder. “My friend, I must be rude. Your little trick is working too well.”

“All my tricks work,” he said. Lor’themar’s hand was heavy and warm. _He has touched me a thousand times,_ he reminded himself. “I’m glad to hear it. Let me know how it goes.”

“I will.”

He moved to escort Rommath to the door, but Rommath stayed him with a gesture. “I will see myself out. Pleasant dreams.”

“And to you.”

 _My dreams are always pleasant._ And, oftener than he would like to admit, of Lor’themar.

* * *

Less than a week before Midsummer Day Rommath was interrupted at breakfast by one of his servants. It was the small hours of the morning, yet nearly bright—light poured in beneath the heavy black curtain he’d had draped over the windows. He worshipped the Sun and its holy splendor, but sometimes that splendor was a bit too much. _  
_

The time had passed quickly with his preparations for Orgrimmar. By day Rommath fulfilled the duties of his office (duties that never ceased, even during the holiest holiday in Quel’Thalas), and by night he watched the stars. The rare configuration grew, then faded. And nothing changed.

“Lord Theron to see you, my lord,” his servant said, eyes lowered. 

Absolutely no part of him wished to deal with statecraft today. He had been cool with Lor’themar since the week past. He told himself it was to hide the fact of their upcoming departure, their strange alliance, that he was trying to avoid a confrontation with Halduron Brightwing, but there was something more to it. In Lor’themar’s presence he felt eaten into, as if every word, every gesture became material and abraded his skin, sloughed away flesh, muscle, bone. Radiance and heat and light that split him open, flensed him. 

But Lor’themar ruled here, and his will was law. “Show him in,” Rommath said, and continued eating though he had no appetite.

Lor’themar entered, dressed in simple breeches and a silk shirt. He was carrying under his arm a strange leather sleeve, shaped and bound like a spellbook. Mage troubles? Rommath nearly rolled his eyes.

“I hope I don’t disturb you,” Lor’themar said.

“Never.” Rommath gestured. “Sit down. Help yourself.”

Lor’themar sat, but held up a hand. “I’ve eaten already. I know it’s early, and I apologise for interrupting. I… possibly could have waited, to be frank. It is nothing urgent. I wished to speak to you on more pleasant matters.”

 _I already told you you weren’t disturbing me. Stop babbling, it doesn’t become you._ “Good. I’m sick of disasters and emergencies. If it were up to me my biggest worry would be organizing my spellbooks and managing my apprentices.”

The lines of Lor’themar’s shoulders softened. “And if it were up to me, my biggest worry would be which of my hawkstriders to ride south. Alas, we do not live in that world. I wish we did.”

Rommath knew it too well. “What brings you here, if it isn’t some crisis?”

“Other than the pleasure of your company?” Lor’themar smiled at his raised eyebrows. “Could we retire somewhere more private?”

“This estate is private.”

“You know what I meant,” said Lor’themar.

In fact, he did not. “Why?”

“You sound suspicious. Not to murder you, I promise. You need a mirror. A large mirror.”

“That provokes no confidence in me whatsoever.” Strange and stranger. “I’m going to ask ‘why’ again.”

“Ask all you like.” Lor’themar’s lips quirked, and he drummed his fingers on the table as if he were an excited boy. “It’s a surprise.”

There was no deflecting this—and sheepishly, stupidly, Rommath wasn’t sure he wanted to. “A large mirror, you say? My dressing room, then.” That was intimate, nearly the same as inviting a man into his bedroom, but he could think of nowhere else. “We can go now, if you are so eager.” 

“That would be good, yes.” Lor’themar rose from his seat, still gripping the leather book. “Will you show me…?”

“Of course,” Rommath said, disarmed by this briskness. “Take something to drink with you. The upper levels are bright.”

“No need,” Lor’themar said, but then he paused. “Some wine, perhaps.” He pointed at a jug on the table. “Would you be averse to me taking this with us?”

“Drunkard,” Rommath said. His own affection surprised him, warring, as it did, with his disapproval. “As you wish.” 

* * *

The townhouses of Quel’Thalas were built in a mirror reflection to the ones in Dalaran: in flat, sprawling levels, stacked atop one another like layers of cake.  
His own quarters were in the tower on the topmost floor, and they were all light, dominated by red-glass windows as wide as two elven men were tall. They bathed the floor in crimson and made it impossible to read without suffering a migraine, though they were lovely, he supposed. Built for a ranger who'd never cracked a book in her life, probably.

Lor’themar had been here before, but he still admired the workmanship of the gold wire adorning them. He also stopped to study the sculpture of Rommath’s last wife, the late Lady Iarindre, who had died when the city fell.

“She was beautiful,” he said, as he always did, and as always Rommath was grateful for it.

His rooms were at the back of the building, filled with clear windows (and wards, but Lor’themar was insensible to that). His dressing room was sunlit, and it opened onto a balcony developed to resemble a garden. Rommath motioned that they had arrived, but Lor’themar said, “Not yet. Let us talk a bit first,” and carried the wine jug outdoors, a goblet in hand. As ever, Rommath could only follow. 

Lor’themar seated himself in the grass at the edge of the garden; beside him, Rommath leaned out over the balustrade and stared into the courtyard below. A long fall. The sight made his head swim and he pulled back, dizzy. 

At his feet, Lor’themar was helping himself to the wine. “It is a hot day. Why do you magi not conjure us up a nice breeze? What is the good of a sorcerer who holds the world in his palms but can’t fix the weather?”

“You’re a ranger, and you’re asking me that?”

Lor’themar glanced up, squinting. Today he had worn his eyepatch, which Rommath found both coarse and charming. The sunlight was not flattering as the moonlight had been—there were little broken veins on his nose and cheeks, and some of the silver in his gleaming hair was grey. “I am asking you, yes.”

“Because the last time someone tried it, they caused a windstorm that hurled most of the palaces on the west coast into the sea. That’s why.”

Lor’themar let out a bark of shocked laughter. “You joke.”

“No. I tell the truth. There are things we don’t understand about the world. Some fool in House Dawnstrike tried to warm up a particularly brisk winter day, and in the process he destroyed seven-tenths of their holdings.”

“I thought your job was to know everything, so us lesser mortals need not.” Lor’themar was watching him, absently rolling the silver goblet between his palms.

“Yes. And no, too.” He ignored Lor’themar’s grimace. “The first thing they teach you in the academies is that you’re a fool who knows nothing,” he said. “They berate and insult you. That makes you humble. Once you’re humble, you can become compassionate. Once you’re compassionate, you can become just. And once you’re just, then you can begin to show mercy.”

Lor’themar’s eyelashes were pale, Rommath noticed for the first time, the lightest of blonds like his hair, nearly translucent in the sun. “And did it work?” he asked. “Are you humble, compassionate, just, and merciful, Magister?” His tone was light—yet there was an undertone of seriousness in his voice, too, and his gaze was intent.

 _Do you truly wish to know?_  Would his masters say so, all the wise elves who had taught him, the dead magisters and magistrixes, his laurel-wreathed grandfather so noble and great-hearted? _No. They would say I am arrogant, cruel, tyrannical, and vengeful._ Jaina Proudmoore had allegedly once said that those who spat on mercy would have none. If that were true, Rommath wondered what he would have.

“Oh, yes.” Rommath stepped from the rail. He gave his own unused goblet a kick and watched it spin away. “Ask anyone. I’m the picture of a perfect mage.”

Perhaps Lor’themar could see that the question bothered him. He changed the subject. “Why did those magi not stop the windstorm, then? When it ruined their lands? Surely they could have halted it.”

“Perhaps they couldn’t,” Rommath said. “Sorcerers are powerful, but we are no gods. Many a general in Quel’Thalas has learned that to her sorrow.”

Lor’themar poured himself a goblet full of wine, drank deeply of it, then poured himself another. “Were there ever gods, do you think?”

A whimsical question, even for Lor’themar. “I’ve wondered that. But Tae’thelan says no. He says there’s no evidence our people ever believed in anything besides the Sunwell.” And, prior to that, the kaldorei’s barbarian moon goddess. “There was no sun-god, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Lor’themar looked up again, worrying his lip between his teeth. It was not a noble gesture. “I did not ask you that,” he said. 

“No?” That took him aback. “What are you asking?”

“I asked you if there were ever gods. You told me that our people never worshipped them. Some would say they are two different things. Some, mind you.”

 _Are they?_  Could Lor’themar truly think that? “Gods are made by men,” Rommath said, tired of the conversation already. Theology was slightly less tolerable than botany.

“The Light is real. I have seen it knit flesh, close gashes.”

“The Light is a real force. I’ve never denied that. I deny the attributes Liadrin and her ilk heap on it. I could turn the arcane into a religion too, if I wished. ‘The arcane is jealous’, ‘the arcane is alluring’, ‘the arcane is beautiful’, ‘the arcane is rational’. None of that is true. It’s just something in the world, like anything else, and we frame it with our own cultural values.”

Lor’themar ran his hands through the grass around him, a caressing gesture, but distracted. “You keep to the old ways, don’t you? You worship the sun and the Sunwell. I’ve seen you praying on Quel’Danas.”

He was surprised that anyone had taken note of that—surprised, and disarmed, somehow. “Of course. Without the sun, I’d be dead. Without the Sunwell, as we all learned, worse than dead. I don’t embrace their divinity, though.” He realised he could no longer decode the minute flickers and motions of Lor’themar’s face, and that worried him. “Do you?”

"No," Lor’themar said. “But I am sorry for our cynicism.”

“We don’t let lies comfort us.”

“No, we don’t.” He pushed his goblet over, and it rolled unevenly through the grass to collide with Rommath’s. “Perhaps we’d be happier men if we did.”

The marble pillar beside him was cool. Rommath splayed his fingers across it, felt it chill his skin like a cold bath on a hot day. “What do you want, Lor’themar?”

He heard the weariness in his voice, but perhaps to another it was frustration, the poor attitude of an old man. Lor’themar’s pensiveness faded, and he sat upright, straightening his clothes. “Your gift is waiting. Shall I give it to you before I go, then?”

Rommath looked up. He had in fact forgotten about the entire thing. “My gift.”

Lor’themar stared at him as if he were a simpleton. Perhaps he was. “Your gift,” he said. “It’s inside. Would you have it, or are you too ill-tempered for that, too?”

Had he been ill-tempered? “I won’t apologise,” Rommath said, already moving towards the interior.

Lor’themar’s laugh was dry, and it did not sound amused. “I thought not, my friend. You never do.”

* * *

“I have no gift for you,” Rommath admitted when they had gone back to the dressing room.

“How terrible of you. I may die of disappointment.”

What Rommath had thought was a spellbook was in fact a case. Lor’themar placed it on the low table at the centre of the room and flipped the cover open. The bed was rumpled silk, pale grey ( _the colour of my house_ , Rommath thought), and in it nested shadows.

“Take it out,” Lor’themar said. When Rommath looked at him his hands were clasped so tightly they had turned white. He gave Rommath a tremulous smile, earnest enough that he could not return it.

He lifted the mask out of the container. It was wrought in a black-and-silver the night sky would have envied, delicate and brilliant enough it might have made Arali himself look twice. At first Rommath thought it was cloth, but when he touched the cheeks he felt that it was metal, pounded so finely it bent and gave beneath his hands.

“It can be worn in battle. The detailing is lacquer, but beneath that, the mass of it is black trillium. My gift to you.” Lor’themar was looking at the mask, not Rommath. “Consider it my thanks for your loyalty and steadfastness.”

When Rommath tilted it, a scattering of black gems across the cheekbones and brow caught the light and shone in rainbows like oil. “Tourmaline?”

“Diamonds,” said Lor’themar.

A frission of tension went up his arms. “The price…”

“My business,” Lor’themar said, almost curtly.

Rommath directed his attention back to the thing in his hands. It was limp, strangely shaped and flat, full of dangling pieces. Too ornate, he thought, feeling guilty, for it had clearly cost a fortune. Too much shine.

“An owl?” he said, bending it a little to try and pick out the form. In the sunlight it was luster and gloom, broken up in odd geometries. “Or a hawk.” His grandfather had been a hawk. Erthalif Demon-Slayer.

“Put it on. See for yourself.”

Rommath nearly dropped it. “What, now? Are you mad?”

“Mad? Why do you think I asked for a mirror, to admire my own fair self?” Lor’themar brushed his fingers over the silk recess in the case where the mask had lain. As if he were not fair indeed. “So you might see it, too.”

The entire morning had Rommath unsettled: the peculiar conversation, the expensive gift, now this. Lor’themar was strange and given to strange flights, yet this was odder than usual. He started to pull on the mask, almost roughly, but Lor’themar stayed him with a touch.

“Turn around,” he said in response to Rommath’s questioning look. “Don’t look until you’re ready.”

“Very well,” he said, and twisted where he was seated on the table so his back was to the wall mirror. He pulled the mask on quickly, fumbling with the strings that held it to his head. It was smooth against his skin, flat sleek scale, cool and so thin he could feel Lor’themar’s breath through it. They were too close together. Faintly he registered this, and still he did not move. 

“What do you think?” Rommath asked when he had tied it.

“Hm.” Lor’themar did not sound over-impressed. “No. Let your hair down.”

His hands were shaking as he obeyed. I am such a fool, a damned fool.

“Better,” Lor’themar said. He reached over and took hold of a hanging piece that swung in and out of Rommath’s now-restricted vision. “These go over your head,” he said, and began to drape them behind his ears, down the part of his hair.

Their weight was comforting. It attached him to his body, anchored him in the world. Made the moment real. He stayed seated, feeling the familiar yearning, fiercer now for their closeness. Once Lor’themar leaned over him, so near their sides pressed together.  _Breathe it in,_ he thought.  _Let the moment pass. You can long for something, and not have it, and live._

“There,” Lor’themar said. “Stand up.”

Rommath stood.

“Turn to me.”

Rommath turned.

For a long time Lor’themar was silent, studying him. His face was perfect and unreadable and fixed in an alien expression—a mask of its own, formed from flesh. 

“You may look now,” Lor’themar said.

Rommath looked.

The thing in the mirror was unknown. Outwardly it had the shape of an elven man, slender, long-legged, graceful. But it was something from the Void: ancient, undying. Evil. Its face was an alien’s carving of an insect without proportion, monstrously ugly, a demon crested with stone and bone. A bird, only it had scales, not feathers, hooks and fangs and edges, nightmare pinions. Its maw hung low and bristled with needle teeth.

The monster’s eyes were felfire. Intelligent and hard and unkind.  _I have seen those eyes in my nightmares._ Not once had he imagined they might belong to him.

“What do you think?” Lor’themar asked. His voice had changed as well.

Any words he spoke in that moment would be stupid and banal, so he did not answer. He looked until the looking itself became a sort of answer, a way of avoiding the moment when he would have to turn around and become mortal again. Was it worse to be a god of evil, or just another bad man?

He wrenched it off so hard the straps scratched his cheeks. After the mask his own face was soft and imperfect, but it was a man’s face at least, comforting in its familiarity. Right now it was pale and wide-eyed.

“Did you choose this?” he asked.

“I asked for an owl,” Lor’themar said, “and they gave me some bronze feathered thing. It did not please me. I had them recast it over and over, and finally the jeweler lost her patience with me and asked me precisely what I wanted. I gave her a scroll about fifteen feet long, and this was the result.”

“She is a genius.” And something else, too. He turned the mask over in his hands. “This is like nothing I have ever seen before.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“No.”

"I see.” Lor’themar looked up at him; his face had fallen. “You don’t like it.” He said it flatly, but there was disappointment in the words.

“It is beyond liking or disliking.”  _This face is mine._ “I can’t accept this gift.”

Lor’themar’s eyebrows twitched. “Are you a fool? Everyone will know you in this.”

Rommath seized on his words. “That is precisely the problem. The mask is meant to hide me, not announce me.” Ah, the anger, at last. He used it like any familiar, bound it to his will. “You completely misunderstood, as usual. Were you listening to me?”

“I have always listened to you.” Lor’themar voice was rising and, faintly, Rommath wondered if the neighbours would hear; faintly he wondered if Lor’themar was drunk, if he had been drunk when he requested and accepted this thing. “Has there ever been a time when I failed to heed your advice, however little I liked it?”

“I recall one time,” Rommath said, unable to stop himself.

“That damned business with the Kirin Tor again? Blame Aethas, blame the men and women who followed him. That was not my fault. Will you hold it against me?” Lor’themar pushed himself off the table and stood, towering. He was strong still, though beginning to show his age and his sedentary life—broadening across the stomach, going slack in the arms. _Poor, stupid, vanquished lynx, do you think to threaten me?_

“Our people never had a god,” Lor’themar said, “but if they did, it would look like that mask.”

If that was an attempt at flattery, it had fallen grossly short. _If there is anything in this universe that looks like that, it is no god, and I pray I never meet it._ “Oh, spare me,” Rommath said. “I know you think I’m over-ambitious, but—”

 “That is not what I said, nor did I ever—” 

“—But you’re simple if you think that this will get me to—”

“Get you to what?”  

Rommath did not know. “To soften.”

Lor’themar’s face turned to stone. “You never soften. Why do you think this is so appropriate?”

He felt as if he had been slapped. Appropriate? That was the face of the monster. The monster that knew no mercy. The monster that was within him. The face of enormity and injustice. “I see,” he said, flat and tuneless.

Lor’themar was accomplished and subtle enough to know he had misstepped. “I meant only for your foes to fear you in combat.”

"My foes are already frightened of me. And a fair few of my friends." Rommath turned his control of his voice to a weapon; he made it a sword, for cutting. “One of us had to be strong. It may as well be me. Who else? Halduron? Liadrin? You?”

“Rommath, enough. You do me an injustice. I meant no insult.”

“Oh? Do I offend you? A hundred times I had to make some decision because you were cowering behind your desk, afraid of your own shadow. I led the Horde’s ambassadors up and down and over Quel’Thalas because you couldn’t look at them without pissing your breeches. I—”

“I said enough!” It was a barked order, the sort Lor’themar had no doubt given on battlefields. But for him there would be no more battlefields. Lor’themar was an aging politician in the bedroom of a bureaucrat, a former Farstrider, and Rommath was not afraid of Farstriders. “You are out of line. I will have no more of this pettiness from you. If you mislike the gift, burn it or bury it or give it away. But vent your bile on a fitter target than me. Whatever pains you, I was not responsible.”

Normally Rommath’s anger gave him strength and pleasure, but this time it tasted of bile. He could not clear it from his throat. “I see it pleases you to pretend I’m the worst man in the world. So be it. Who am I to deny my liege lord?” He gave a mocking half-bow. “Yet you allowed everything that happened, either because it was convenient or because you were too weak to stop it. And you were the one who decided that band of rangers couldn’t stay, which, by the way, went very well for them in the south—”

“Hold your tongue!” he said, this time in a hiss, and finally Rommath did fall silent. Lor’themar was clenching and unclenching his hands.  _He wants to hit me, but he won’t. He would never._

And Rommath knew that he had at last gone too far. “Lor’themar—”

“Silence.” Lor’themar wet his lips. The elegance of the gesture only further infuriated him. “You are my advisor and my left-hand,” he said in a voice as thin and hard as sheet-steel. “But there are limitations on what even you may say. What happened at Quel’Lithien was an unspeakable tragedy. The next time you gloat over what happened to those rangers, I will take your tongue.”

He had no more words. The harshness of Lor’themar’s voice chilled Rommath even more than the threat. All the anger died in his chest, and he was left as cold and grey as the ashes of a spent pyre.

“As my regent says.” He bowed low, not sarcastic this time. “I am yours to command.”

Lor’themar’s good eye was blazing, yet the look he gave Rommath had despair in it as well. For a moment he looked so helpless and frustrated Rommath thought he might actually scream at him—but Lor’themar was regent, a politician, practiced at hiding his heart, and he composed himself, straightening a little, squaring his shoulders as if shifting the weight from them. He made a kingly gesture, dismissing Rommath. Dismissing him as a thing that was beneath notice.

“Keep the gift anyway,” he said. “Even if you never wear it. I doubt the jeweler will take it back.”

He did not want her to take it back. He did not want anyone else to look on it, touch it, wear it. He felt as if someone had taken a piece of him without his permission and sealed it in stone, inert. He felt as if all the minute fissures in him had been cracked open, spread, mined. Known, and judged, and found wanting.

“Well. My thanks,” Rommath said. The words came out sharp, snarling. Spit and spit and the viper’s poison does not diminish. It was his, part of him, from him. The world could overflow with venom, spill its banks with venom, drown in venom. In him it would never be less.

* * *

Rommath had not composed himself, even by the final day of Midsummer. Men had said far crueler things to him, but they were not Lor’themar. It was not even the threat that stung—empty warnings, he knew it, and he had been threatened with as much a dozen times by as many lords. Lor’themar would not raise a hand against him.

He kept the mask, not knowing what else to do with it. _Is this what I am?_ He touched it, remembered the shock of its horror.  _When I die and go to freeze in the thousand hells, will this be the face I have to wear?_ The thought filled him with grief and anger so intense it made him sick.

He slept in his office the night before he was to light the pyre, fitful—his dreams were flickering shadows, but when he woke he could remember nothing. He dozed briefly, and was interrupted at dawn by a pair of acolytes from the Church of Light. They came in without knocking, both girls—sisters by the look of it, dressed in golden robes and carrying smoking bowls of incense. The room filled with the smell of sandalwood, lavender and roses, and the windows steamed.

“The eternal Light rises with you, and will forever,” one said. She looked all of sixteen, and when he stood up, naked, she blushed.

Rommath bit back his comment about the Light and what it could do and where it could go. _Don’t spoil this. It is holy for everyone._ It would reflect poorly on him to denigrate the ancient festival. Ut was a tradition, and much of his own power was likewise traditional.

And the people needed to celebrate. They had cast off a tyrant, seen their leader rise high and honour himself. And them.

The acolytes went through the old rituals of purification: one of the girls read aloud some of the ancient devotionals to the sun. Rommath tolerated that until she began a prayer in Common. Then he could hold his tongue no longer. “In Quel’Thalas we speak Thalassian,” he told her. “I trust the Light will understand you.”

While she read, the other washed him in water blessed by the highest-ranking priests and priestesses of the church. To him it smelled just like roses and expensive oils, and he allowed her to scrub him with it until his skin stung and turned red as a babe’s.

Slowly the sun rose, and he watched it trace its way into his quarters just as the girl was setting into the skin behind his ears. He was supposed to use the time to reflect on the sins and joys of the year past, but his mind kept straying to Lor’themar and how he had looked as he left Rommath’s quarters. Disappointed. Despairing. A _s if I was not who he had thought I was._ A man of unpleasant surprises.

But what had he been thinking? They had known each other for years now. It Lor’themar had expected different, he was the fool, and it was not Rommath’s fault.

After Rommath was bathed, they trimmed his hair, and then one of them cast the clippings into the fire she carried. For a moment the smell overcame the flowers, and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. The hair below his neck had to go too. _A throwback to the days when the king used to bed his magisters,_ Rommath thought with all his considerable bitterness, but he acquiesced to that, too, without comment. Even when he had been a young magister, assigned less important lightings, he had hated it, but at least he had had the comfort of his complaining.

Now he said nothing. _A viper I may be, but where are my fangs?_

The only pleasant part came afterwards, when he went outside to lie in the sun—once cleansed of the old year, nothing but his official robes were supposed to touch him. Drying like a beached whale, he called it to himself, and scoffed at the superstition, but it was nice to lie down on the grass. The wind was warm, and it smelled of the sea, and felt pleasant on his newly exposed skin. He remembered an old story about a magistrix of surpassing beauty who struck blind all those who dared spy on her on Midsummer, then smiled at the thought. _I am not worth the trouble._

He was grateful for that small respite. But he did remember, touched with nostalgia, what it was like to be looked on with fascination. And he wondered what it would be like to share this brilliant morning with another, as he had shared it with Lady Iarindre for a hundred years. Memories and illusions. Trimmings shaved from his old self, cast into the flame.

 _And who are you dreaming of, anyway? A one-eyed ranger lord? Your white knight?_  Oh Rommath, you fool, you old fool. Lor’themar had led them through two nightmares. He was brave, and cunning, and beautiful—yes, beautiful, anyone with eyes could see that, with that mane of hair so pale it was nearly white, that rough-hewn, perfect face.

But if he did choose Rommath, what then? Become his secret lover? Sneak into his quarters? Follow him around, a lovesick kitten, and steal caresses in the garden? Be spied on and snickered about, then cast aside for a high-born bride when the time came?

 _I am his advisor._ And that was more than he deserved. Rommath had spat in the face of friendship when he betrayed Kael’thas Sunstrider, when he gave first the Alliance magi and then the Horde’s his shoulder. 

_I am here to serve him, not love him._

* * *

Shortly before midday the acolytes came out onto the balcony for him, carrying his robes between them.

“It is time, Your Worship,” the girl who had read him the prayers said. They helped him dress, bending to guide his feet into his slippers, brushing the last of the oil from his hair then tying it back—the taller acolyte had to stand on her tip-toes for that. His thin cotton under-robe went on first, then the robe of heavy crimson silk. Over that went panels of sheerest phoenix-silk woven with emeralds and embroidered in gold, secured with a golden sash. No cloak today. He would be too hot as it was, even before he stepped into the blaze.

Dressed, there was one final decision to make. He went back inside to his desk and pulled open the bottom drawer. For a moment he hesitated over the leather case containing the monster mask, weighing it in his mind. Flat and lifeless now, it was less fearsome: dark, inert, a crushed bug. It would please Lor’themar for him to wear this gift, be an apology and an acceptance both. Any hurt between them would dissolve if he went into the flames in the form Lor’themar felt he should take.

 _People will talk,_ he thought. _Such an expensive gift. They’ll talk and wonder._ And he did not want to face the new year as a demon-horror-thing. No. Better to be the evil he knew, they all knew.

He reached for his worn red-and-gold scarf, softened into familiarity from use. He was what he was in that, too, but at least no one would be thinking about it. No one besides him and Lor’themar.

When he had secured it, he spared a glance at himself in one of the state-shields on his wall. Black and gold and crimson: lovely, and unmistakably elven. Whatever the monster was, it was invisible and inside him. Sealed away.

“I am ready,” he told the acolytes.

* * *

In the city they burned lesser fires, but the Flame of Silvermoon was so massive it could not safely be lit anywhere but the open.

They had built it out in the forest, in the paved clearing the magi used for teaching apprentices their first fire-based spells. On most days the area was filled with children, the oldest no older than thirteen, but today it was dominated by a bundle of tied logs, twelve feet tall and at least ten feet in diameter. They’d been positioned in a massive bowl of pounded bronze, the entire thing levitating about a foot off the ground.

 _It will burn bright as vengeance._ Rommath arrived at midday with the acolytes. A few dozen priests and priestesses fanned around them, having joined them on their walk through the city. They were garbed in white and gold, carrying brilliant lamps, wearing matching expressions of pious stupidity.

Among them, he felt like an unsightly spot. That galled him—he loathed them and their stupid religion, wanted to spit in their smug faces. He would have preferred to have his magisters around him, strong and fierce and beautiful, but of course the human-loving sheep would come along, bleating nonsense and spoiling the poetry of the whole thing. As if they didn’t piss themselves at the sight of a bit of fire. As if every one of them wouldn’t love to throw him on to burn.

The common people were standing at the edge of the clearing, and his guards had to shoulder their way through them to clear a path for walking. They studied Rommath with expressions that ranged from awe to interest to outright hostility. _Their eyes are like mine. My great legacy._ If they hated him, let them hate their own selves, too.

In the clearing most of the notaries were already present, seated on benches and cushions: almost entirely elves, but also ambassadors, conspicuous. Lor’themar was at the very front, the place of highest esteem, dressed in polished platinum plate a shade lighter than his hair that gleamed so brilliantly in the sun it was hard to look at. Rommath stared at his back, wondering if he could melt the metal with the force of his anger alone. But Lor’themar did not so much as twitch.

They announced him as he stepped out of the forest with his entourage and strode towards the pyre: “All rise for His Worship, Rommath Salarasi, Grand Magister of Quel’Thalas and Lord of Magi.” No, not a lord, not any longer. In another world, they’d have called him archmage, too.

The ambassadors and courtiers and magisters and nobles shuffled. Lor’themar and Halduron did not stand of course—though when he passed, Halduron gave him a serious look that so clearly showed suppressed mirth he seemed a minute from collapsing into laughter. Lor’themar nodded but stared past him at a spot over Rommath’s shoulder, as if unwilling to look into his eyes. In return, Rommath glared at him so long and so openly and with such raw hostility he felt the high priest turn to him and gape.

Bedlam had also stayed seated, but he grinned and waved until Halduron, laughing, gently caught and lowered his hand.

The priest spoke for a while—a long while, it felt to Rommath, standing by his side and trying not to yawn. He said something about the “sins and errors of the old year,” as if their people had been at fault for the hideous business with Hellscream. This priest was said to have a taste for good wine and pretty women. _And who protects your ass while you indulge in such fine things if not me and mine?_

Then priest, when he was done blathering, bowed to him. Rommath should have bowed in turn, but instead he turned to the pyre, showing the crowd his back: a rude gesture, virtually insubordinate to Lor’themar.

But underneath his irritation, a tingle of excitement was worming its way up his spine, making his fingers twitch. He stepped close to the bundle, closer than a lesser mage would have dared. He could see where the oil had soaked into the wood, where they had peeled away the damp bark to reveal the drier centre. It would burn fast, and easily.

He called power between his hands, drew the energy of it up from the leylines beneath his feet, and with his fingers shaped it into a growing sphere. It stretched, uncurled, suddenly bloomed. Its warmth felt like nothing more than a gentle glow on his skin, but if he chose he could make it hot enough to melt flesh, eat bone, warp steel.

Not today, though. He spun it into a narrow line, winding it around itself like thread until it could have passed through the head of a pin. The bolt quivered, and he released it, letting it move with its own strength. It brushed one of the logs in a trickle of flame.

For a moment nothing happened; a few weak tendrils of smoke rose, and the smell of burning fat tickled his nostrils.  Then, faster than his gaze could follow, fire roared in lines up the wood where the oil had soaked it, smoking and spitting. The sudden blaze lit his eyes, struck at his face.

He nearly stepped back, but why should he flee? This was his element, and he stood in it brother-to-brother, father-and-child. The closed firebird circle: siring and being sired. Whatever violence he found here, he recognized it twice over in himself. Friend-to-friend. He, who had never had true friends except Kael.

But fire knows no friends. As Rommath watched it jumped from log to log, formed whirling shapes: dancers and duellers, scythes and axes, thorns and tentacles. He caught trees looming larger than the sky, a mountain smoking, a wave rising over his head with the force of battering ram. The fire bent, curved, sharpened until it formed a chair, hulking, then opened into a dragon’s smoking maw.

There were secrets in there, for those who could read them. Rommath could not.

He edged forwards, examining the pyre for places where the wood was not burning. The heat could not hurt him, but it never lost its intensity. Tendrils of flame snaked towards him, and his eyes watered from smoke, from ash, from ecstasy and agony and the sensation of his own skin, blazing. The midsummer bonfire, burning the old year in all its decayed memories, its unfulfilled hopes, its disappointments.

 _And from it rises the New Year like a triumphant phoenix, reborn from death._ But there were no more phoenixes. No mage now would dare call one from the elemental plane, and they would never again fly at night over the Spire, or blaze like torches in the winter darkness of the Sunstriders’ menageries.

One of the logs had not caught, and he lashed it with fire, stoking the blaze. Even through his mask the heat seared his lungs. _I am breathing fire, now,_ he thought, and he gasped it in, stinging now, a choking cloud. _I am the phoenix, now. I am the last phoenix._

A cinder brushed his cheek, his ear, and he felt the burn without pain, a purer heat, beyond mortal sensation. The priests claimed that from grief comes joy. After the ash, the forest, reborn anew, brighter with the colours of its shed mourning. 

But that was not what had happened. The old joys were not less beautiful for the absence of suffering. And this shadow that had crawled through him did not make the fire sharper. All that grief had done was harden him, until he moved in a world devoid of sensation. He was just a man, now. When he stepped from this blaze, he would be Rommath, and nothing more.

Only in the fires did he feel alive. And he could not stay in them forever.

He stepped away from the pyre at last, faintly aware of the gazes at his back. Soot-stained, sweat-streaked he must be: disheveled, unlovely. Not a god or a priest at all—just another absent-minded mage, unhinged after his disgrace, waiting to slip and die. A bad predator among predators, each more dangerous than the last. He looked out at his magisters and recognised the hunger and awe on their faces. Each one, dreaming of the day when he or she would have this honour.

He walked back to his seat beside Bedlam, the fire crackling behind him. Every eye in the crowd was on him. Old madman they were saying. Old blood mage. Rommath did not care.

No. Not every eye. Lor’themar was watching the wood burn, face rigid, almost pained. Even when Rommath sat, Lor’themar did not look at him.

Only Bedlam seemed pleased with the spectacle. He was applauding roundly, and he fairly bounced as Rommath joined him. “Oh, such panache, such poise! You are a virtuouso, a genius of magic. I know why it is said that your only peer rules in Dalaran. What is it like to hold such power?”

 _Exhausting. Tedious. Burdensome._ His enemies were all around him, watching. _I am high priest of the arcane._ Rommath could get tired; the grand magister could not.

He straightened his shoulders and spoke so the magisters behind him would hear. “Like being a god.”


	3. Part Three

It took Rommath an hour in his office to slough the pyre’s grime from his face. So much for the ritual cleansing. And when he was done his skin itched and peeled. So much for the sun’s gentle balm, too.

Lor’themar had spoken to him after the ceremony, but so coldly it had been clear the whole thing was for show, nothing more. His good eye was flat, almost blank—as lightless as his false one, Rommath thought. 

He had been similarly cold, though heat came to him more easily.A choking pain had torn its way up his throat, tightening his muscles until they ached. “You are being a petulant brat,” he’d wanted to snap, and he had wanted to slap Lor’themar. 

Afterwards he had paced in his office. _I must end this,_ he thought, not knowing where the force of that necessity came from, not knowing what he was even referring to. True: Lor’themar would leave soon, potentially as soon as the day after next, and Rommath must be in his good graces or he had no doubt the regent’s absence would be a nightmare of absent information and power plays.

 _There is no shame in it,_ he told himself as he dressed—in simple robes, light and cool. He would not lose any face. Friends erred and friends apologized, it happened every day. Lor’themar would forgive him. Everything would be fine. _I don’t even have to mean it, just say it._

It was not just that, though. Guilt, too, on his shoulders now, familiar and hated. _It was such a rich present, really_. Rommath did not _owe_ his approval to anyone alive—but to have gone to that trouble, that expense, then to have it thrown in his face… Gentleness was not in Rommath’s nature, but he might have been a little gentler in this.

He ate late and watched the sun set over the hills in the east, shielding his eyes from its glare as it struck the metal roofing, turned the city to molten bronze. Silvermoon, melting in the heat. There was nothing for it. Rommath would have to go to him, and tonight, no later, or else Lor’themar would leave him and go to Orgrimmar alone, and this rift between them would grow wider until it became uncrossable.

When it was dark Rommath went down to the streets, pulling his cloak tighter as if it were a shield against the night. The city was wild now, a tangle of voices and lights and music, giggles, doors opening and closing. 

And everywhere flames: torches, lanterns, bonfires that glowed red and gold and forbidden green. Their light cast weird shapes on the walls. Figures moved, gathered and then scattered. _There is powerful magic here. Blood magic_. This was a night of chaos, but it did not frighten him. Nor did it move him. Nothing in the dark was more dangerous than he.

As the city breathed and burned, Rommath wandered, lost in his thoughts. In a simple robe and a moth-eaten cloak, shed of his jewelry and bereft of his guards, he was nothing more than another elf, not old of face or body yet hunched like an elder. The illusion of youth grew more taxing and less effective with every year, and it was madness for him to walk without protection, even disguised. But he wanted to be alone to think.

Gratitude was easy enough to recognize. Lor’themar had spared him, saved him, befriended him at a time when another man would have had Rommath flayed and drowned. And most were not so fortunate as to kneel before a lord they respected, admired, and liked. _Yes, like._ He had grown to like Lor’themar: enjoyed his conversation, looked forward to their games of _fethesi_.

To Rommath that was a new sensation, strange, if pleasant. He had had many masters, and none of them had been particularly likable. Lord Vathecor was demanding and difficult, never satisfied; King Anasterian was perfect and unreachable. And Kael…

Kael had been a god given mortal form, phoenix fire wrapped in clay. His light was too brilliant, his glow too hot. Kael had been brother, son and true love to him, and Rommath had adored him so much it hurt, but he had not always _liked_ Kael. Indeed, Rommath had often found it unbearable to be around him. Kael had been so prone to moods, so dramatic about everything, so brooding and difficult. A genius, with everything that meant.

Lor’themar was not difficult in the slightest. Indeed, he was simple as the Lady Iarindre had been simple. Thoughtful, and slow to anger. _He has his pipe and his brandy, we play our manly little game, he laughs at my jokes. He speaks_ , _and I listen_ , _and he smiles_.

Rommath might go see him now, wanted to with a curious wanting that almost ached, but the Midsummer night was for revelry. Lovers were in the alleys and the streets, closeted away in their towers, burning shortened candles, welcoming the dawn together. Lor’themar might be entertaining someone. And why not? Rich, powerful and handsome beyond any dream. Why should he be alone?

Rommath’s stomach went into nauseous knots at the thought of that, and this time he let the feeling sit, let it grow, let himself name it. It was long past time. _I am jealous_. Jealous of whoever it was who sat by Lor’themar’s side, shared his meals and shared his divan, kissed him and advised him and tangled naked with him in the close darkness of this night.

Pointless. He was an old fool. He turned around, went back to his office. The apology could wait. Rommath had his dignity yet, threadbare though it may be.

At the foot of the Spire, though, he hesitated, not willing to go inside right away. The night was a muted glass blue from the warmth, and the walls that surrounded the Spire’s grounds blocked out most noise until the city was nothing more than a pulse like the slow beat of a war drum.

Instead he circled the tower and went into the gardens. There were fewer guards here than usual; part of him was annoyed and alarmed by that. _The perfect evening to kill a man, if you wanted him dead._ But the heat and the shadows and the starlight wore down his irritation. In the park the night flowers had opened, sweetly fragrant—jasmine, deersbane, evening primrose, moonflower. The black lilies nodded in their beds as he passed, as if doing him homage.

At the northernmost point of the grounds the gardens rose sharply and the terrain roughened: an older section, one of the few not destroyed by the Scourge and therefore not replaced. The tiled path broke into fragments that scraped his feet through his sandals. He had to elbow his way through the bushes at times, and branches caught his hair and robes like finger.

Up ahead a marble pavilion gleamed, delicate tapering columns and golden arches, some archaic Thalassian even Rommath could not read written on its side in glowing tile work. But as he drew closer he saw the stonework was cracked and darkened in places, the ornamental carvings eroded, the southern wall swarming with flowering vines, the whole thing sagging.

It was farther than it seemed. By the time he reached it he was out of breath and his legs hurt. He expected to find some young couple on the floor in the middle of a tryst, but the area was blessedly deserted. Apparently the lovers of Silvermoon knew of more romantic spots than the centre of governance in the realm.

This place was romantic enough, though, in its way. Below him the sea was black and it lashed the cliffs, sending up a spray fine as lace. Most of Silvermoon’s coast was soft beaches, save for the old Windrunner holdings in what had once been the Golden Dale and was now another part of the Ghostlands. But this was more familiar.

Rommath stood there, drenched in darkness, thinking nothing, letting the motion of the sea fill his eyes, match his heartbeat. The passage of time seemed to leave him behind. Only the waves moved.He was the last thing alive in Quel’Thalas, the last thing alive in the world. Behind him was Dalaran, looming, towers and cells, a labyrinth he could never navigate. Around him only animals.

But then there were footsteps coming up the path behind him, cracking the silence, and Rommath turned. As he watched the darkness a pale shadow broke the night, grew until shoulder-to-shoulder it would be taller than he.

No, not a shadow—a man, with fair hair and a single glowing eye.

For a moment they looked at each other in silence. The beauty of the elf before him was more than the climbing flowers, shamed the gold-and-emerald mosaics on the walls. For a moment Rommath wondered if he was still lost in his reverie, dreaming wide-eyed as Seers did. _Quel’Thalas lives eternally in her children,_ he thought, and it made him sad, and it made him proud. _Until the last one of us is gone to dust, our homeland will never truly die._

At last Lor’themar looked up at the shattered roof, jaw tensing.

“You have had a good evening?” he asked.

“Quiet,” Rommath said.

“Mine was also quiet.” Now Lor’themar looked down at the ground.  “This is a fine place, isn’t it? I have never seen you here before.”

“I don’t have time to come.” Still keeping his distance, Rommath approached him, cautious as he would be with a skittish animal. He did not know what he was doing, what he even wanted to do. But the silence grew long, awkward, filled with the recollection of their shared anger.

“The sea is beautiful tonight,” Rommath heard himself say, just to say something. A humiliatingly empty remark. _The sea is beautiful._ As well observe that it’s wet. His face warm, he added, “I’m weary.”

“The lighting of the bonfire. Yes. I understand. An early morning for you, and now a late night. If you are too tired, I will—”

“No,” Rommath said. The thought of returning to his empty apartments held no appeal for him. “I was warning you. My company won’t be the best.”

Lor’themar gave a small grin, but he did not make the obvious rejoinder. “Fine. I came to enjoy the evening, not listen to empty chatter.”

They approached the rail together and stood side by side at a polite distance. Still close enough that the heat from Lor’themar’s body glowed against him. Rommath fanned himself, though it was not nearly as hot as it had been earlier. Of all the people to be with on this night of nights here was Lor’themar and none other. How strange. As unfailing and mysterious as the network of the stars. _He and I, conjunct._

“You’ve never seen me here, you said.” Rommath shifted a little so that he could watch Lor’themar from the corners of his eyes. “So you must be a frequent visitor.”

“Yes, I come whenever I can. It’s often isolated. I don’t know why. Too rugged for the tastes of my countrymen, perhaps.”

“Ill-maintained, you mean. I don’t know why you bother.”

“That’s the style of it,” Lor’themar said, defensive and fond, and his hand curled around the rail. “I like it. I come here sometimes and I think, all the world could collapse and all of us could die, yet there would still be something living at the end of it. It might even be beautiful.”

The ranger-warrior-bureaucrat-poet. It was not even remotely funny to Rommath anymore. Lor’themar’s depths would never cease surprising him.

“Our tauren allies say that,” Rommath said. “That nothing passes away without another thing passing into existence. Even where death is, life rushes to fill the gaps.” _Not if the Legion had won_. But they had defeated the Legion, and Kael was still dead, too. “It all sounds like nonsense to me,” he added. “Stories we tell ourselves.”

“Because you are a sorcerer, and know nothing of real life.”

Rommath nearly argued, then caught himself and shrugged. “Maybe not. It is beautiful here, though.” He snuck another look at Lor’themar and found him staring down at the rocks below. “You find this place beautiful, too?”

“I said so, yes.”

“Yes.” One of Rommath’s eyebrows was itching; he smoothed it with his fingers, feeling gawky and self-conscious as a boy. “If the seat of my forefathers and foremothers still stood, I would take you there. The beauty of this place is nothing compared to it. Black Keep—the fortress I grew up in—was built from volcanic rocks, so it shines like a mirror in the sunlight. Then there’s Greater Sunhall, which is all white stone.” White and black, like the pieces of _fethesi._ Like Lor’themar and Rommath.“The flowers are different too, because of the altitude. There were hot springs, and marshes full of partridgeberries. Poor, but lovely.”

“It sounds beautiful,” Lor’themar said.

“It was.” The Isle had also been rugged on its northern side, where dying flames hot enough to melt glass still smoked in cracks that split the earth. In the west it had been salt flats, the sandbar so long you could walk to mainland Quel’Thalas when the sea ebbed. The Scourge had filled all those hollows and tide pools with the corpses of his kin.

His family had also had a house in Dalaran, and Rommath had lived there for longer years still. He remembered the glass-covered gardens, glittering with ice crystals in winter, the old library, his grandfather’s run-down office with the casement window that never closed properly. _Who owns it now? Did they give it to Aethas? Has it passed back to Modera, or did they turn it into apprentices’ lodgings?_

Lor’themar was looking at him, rigid around the mouth, his forehead creased. His good eye was fixed on Rommath’s face, and it, too, was hard. “Why did you say what you did? Last week, when I brought you that mask?”

“What did I say?” He could not remember, or did not want to remember.

“That I thought you were the worst man alive. And that I was also the worst man alive, because of the things I allowed to happen.”

“Because it’s true,” Rommath said, defiant and still weak, so weak.

“Plenty of things are true. It seemed uncommonly harsh, even for you.”

“Then punish me for it, if that’s your wish,” Rommath said. Lor’themar actually turned his face away. “Aren’t you regent? That’s what they say you are. Though sometimes I think you’re a frightened boy who got turned around in the woods.”

Lor’themar whipped around to glare at him, nostrils flaring. “And sometimes I think you are an old warlock who drinks the blood of virgins.”

As if that old chestnut would offend him. “That’s absurd. This is Midsummer. There are no virgins around for a hundred miles.”

Lor’themar laughed, but too loud, and there was pain in it. “So very clever you are, aren’t you? How is it that words never touch you? You must teach me that trick.”

How was it that Lor’themar had, yet again, read him so wrongly? “Words touch me,” he said. _When I asked you to pardon me and you said it was already done, that good men were forced to live in a bad world, you touched me then. And when you called me brother and ally and friend, and raised me up from my knees in front of all our people, and gave me your trust one more time even after I misused it, I was touched._

Rommath, too, could touch Lor’themar, he had seen it. Yet his touch was harder, unkind.

No, he could not think that. He had been wronged and acted accordingly. _But I am still sorry, so sorry._ Never apologise, never bow, never scrape. Pride was all he had now, a tattered cloak to wrap himself in to hide his nakedness. _I have done things that can never be undone, but I had to, I had no choice_. The words were acid in his throat, his eyes. Never bend, never submit, never forgive. Ask for nothing, give nothing. Die before you kneel. Die standing, and alone.

He turned from the rail and took Lor’themar’s hand, felt him tense without pulling away. The skin was rough, chapped, the nails square and bitten short. In the dim light they did not shine quite as brightly as the rest of him. On his ring finger Lor’themar wore the signet of state, a smaller version of the one worn by the king. There was a roll of fat beneath the band.  

Where the king’s ring was gold, the edges of this one were hard steel, sharp. When Rommath kissed the seal of Quel’Thalas it pressed into his lips, tasted of sour dirty metal. It hurt, and the setting knocked his teeth hard enough to chip the enamel. But underneath it, Lor’themar’s skin was warm, his muscles loose. Solid as the pine colonies even fire couldn’t kill, yielding yet so strong.

Something was overflowing Rommath, and he pressed the ring tighter to his mouth stifle it, closed his eyes when it threatened to spill from them. Never speak your pain. To speak it is weakness.

Ages passed before the thing faded and died, and finally Rommath felt he could step away. He was light-headed, disoriented as if he had woken from a long sleep. The stars that showed through the pavilion’s cracked roof were brighter than they had been, and they spun dizzily.

He had to clutch the rail to keep from falling. But he was falling still, falling down the gap between stars and suns, headlong.

Lor’themar’s eye gleamed in the darkness, trained on him. The silence drew on, but it felt different. It all felt different.

"The night is still young,” Lor’themar said at last. “Come. Walk with me.”

* * *

They went back down into the garden. Below them, around them, the city flared red and white, and its brilliance plunged the grounds into a deeper darkness. Only half the lanterns had been lit, and most were guttering. A sloppy job. Nobody wished to work on this night.

“I thought you might come here,” Lor’themar said as they went—slowly, for Rommath found the terrain difficult to navigate. “If you weren’t busy, that is.”

“Busy with my stable of studs, you mean,” Rommath said, and Lor’themar gave a cough. “I know what reputation I have. Surrounded by tits and cocks.”

“I would not say _surrounded_.” He paused. “Would you?”

“Certainly, I would.” Rommath let Lor’themar’s stunned silence settle for a moment, then said, “Aethas is the tit, and Astalor…”

Without light the gardens were transformed. Carefully manicured shrubs loomed, turned into leering demons, and roots became traps concealed with darkness. Overhead the trees closed them off from the sky; the lattices from which dangled grapes and starflowers seemed to cave in, as if at any moment the wood would collapse and let down the night weighted with shadows.

Lor’themar evidently thought so too, for after a few minutes he veered off the tiled path and through a cluster of shrubs. “This way,” he said. “There’s a trail that cuts around to the back of the pond. You will like it.”

Rommath eyed it and did not move. “You see a trail? I see a broken leg.”

“Your delightful legs will be fine. Here.” He offered his forearm. “Step where I step. I’ll lead you.”

Rommath had left his staff upstairs, and wished now he hadn’t, but Lor’themar was steady, sure-footed. “All those endless decades of fighting the forest trolls,” he said at one point. “If you think this is bad, you should have seen the woods around the Amani Pass. You couldn’t see more than two feet ahead, and every other inch of ground was bristling with traps designed to take off your legs or your head. The trolls used to try to lure us in and pick us off one by one.”

“It sounds like hell. Why not cut the knot and just burn through it?”

“In the end, we did,” Lor’themar said quietly, and Rommath fell silent.

It could not have taken them more than a quarter of an hour to walk through the thicket, yet it felt like ages that he shuffled, blind, clinging to Lor’themar’s arm. “Close now,” Lor’themar said, and up ahead through interlocking branches hung with grey-white moss the darkness lightened and the sky showed through in patches.

They stepped into a clearing spread with wild grass that led a short way down to the surface of the pond, so close that, if he lay flat, Lor’themar’s feet would nearly touch it. This area had clearly not been intended for visitors—the ground was spattered with wildflowers in bursts of white, damp with dew.  

A breeze stirred the water, made the trees shift, brought Rommath their smell. The sweetness of pines, touched with rot. He inhaled, closing his eyes.

Lor’themar touched him between the shoulder blades, too brief. “Worth the unpleasant trek?”

“I suppose.” Lor’themar was right, the place was lovely, and altogether strange seen from a different angle. It occurred to him that here, surrounded on all sides by trees and hanging flowers, there was more privacy. He did not know what to make of the thought. “And I suppose I must sit in the dirt.”

“I suppose you must,” Lor’themar said, wry, but he snapped off his cloak with a flick of his wrist and spread it out over the grass. “Will this assuage your worries?”

“A chair would answer them better,” Rommath said. He seated himself anyway. Lor’themar’s cloak was cotton, but soft as old leather, and the plants beneath were a cushion between his bones and the ground. “This is actually fairly tolerable.”

Lor’themar had kicked off one of his shoes and was in the process of ridding himself of the other. “I’m so glad you think so,” he said.

Once he was barefoot, Lor’themar started in at the buttons near his throat. Rommath watched him, somehow not caring about his obviousness even when Lor’themar caught his gaze and raised his eyebrows.

“If I’d known we were going to end up here, I would have brought some wine,” Rommath said.

“Conjure it.” Lor’themar seated himself on the cloak beside Rommath and leaned back on his arms with a sigh. The muscles in his shoulders bunched and tensed through the cloth, and his shirt slid up a little, exposing the narrowest strip of his stomach.

“A surefire way to earn your eternal hatred,” Rommath said. “Word is my conjured wine has the exact bouquet and taste of engine oil, with a subtle undertone of stale sweat.”

Lor’themar laughed. “Bedlam’s seal of disapproval, I take it.”

“Who else would know what ‘stale sweat’ tastes like?” Rommath tapped a nail to his lips, pretending to reflect on the question. “Well, perhaps _you_ would, disgusting as you sometimes are.”

To his surprise, Lor’themar only gave him a sidelong look. Thinking, perhaps, _You do not seem to find me so disgusting._

When he was sure Lor’themar would not comment on it he pulled his hair out of its tie. It fell around his shoulders and down his back, stringy from sweat and ash, and he shook it out with his fingers.

“Too warm?” Lor’themar said without looking at him.

“Dirty from the pyre. Yes. I’m acutely aware of the irony. Do not say it, Lor’themar. I am a highborn man, and you a ranger, probably born covered in mud.”

“Mm. Funny you should mention it. I had a story I wished to tell you, actually. It is, in fact, about a young ranger.”

In the darkness, Rommath smiled. “Is this young ranger named Lor’themar Theron, perhaps?”

“That I will not answer. Decide for yourself if I am either anymore.” He sat up and folded his legs under him, shifting so they were face to face. “It starts like this. When this ranger first began his training, he studied all the flowers and animals of Quel’Thalas, and he came to know every crag and boulder in the kingdom. He knew the names of every bird and their calls, and he knew how the roots of ancient trees connected, and which bees visited which flowers.”

“My heart pounds at the idea of such information.”

“I’m certain it does,” Lor’themar said dryly. “He also learned the secrets of plants and shrubs. Don’t roll your eyes at me, Rommath. That is life and death in the woods.”

“Doubtless,” Rommath said in the tone he used on apprentices.

“Believe whatever you like, it’s true. Many a stupid, hungry magister has died from eating a poison mushroom, because he was too witless to think what he was stuffing down his gullet.”

“And people say my tongue is sharp!”

“Hush.” Lor’themar ran his hand through the grasses, his hair drifting around his ears, across his face. “Quel’Thalas is not a gentle land. It never was. I remember, in the mountains around Greenwood Pass there were ferns that had leaves sharp as swords that would slice through leather as you passed them, and one tree whose fruit looked exactly like apples that would have you vomiting blood in half an hour. And of course, a flower whose sap was acid that could burn through ceramic.”

“Your black lily,” Rommath said. He realized he was tugging at a snagged thread in Lor’themar’s cloak, ripping it with his nails, and held his hands still in his lap.

“The black lily. Yes.” Lor’themar looked down, but Rommath could see, in the glow of his eyes, that his face had gone taut. There were beads of sweat along the edge of his hair, too, small enough that Rommath had missed them until now. The realization jolted him. “So poisonous even phoenixes will not touch it, it’s said. Yet it has many uses. The roots, if you can pull them, make a light, strong rope when woven together. And like so many poisons, it is a potent anti-venom—when prepared properly, by those who know how.”

Rommath said nothing. 

“The secret is to know in the first place. But this young ranger, he never wanted to be ignorant—he understood that everything had value and could save his life one day. So he learned the secrets of the plant, how to dig up the roots without touching the stem, how to squeeze the pollen from it quickly. His knowledge gave him great pleasure.”

“As knowledge always does,” Rommath said. His voice sounded darker than usual to his ears, almost hoarse.

“It was more than that. He felt as if he had been inducted into some great secret—that he saw the thing no one else saw, something rare and special. His eyes were sharper, keener. His lack of fear was the, how shall I say this, the mark of his wisdom.”

In the darkness, blue from moonlight and green from their eyes, so close together were they sitting now that Rommath became aware of Lor’themar’s breath on his face, the pulses of his body as he tensed his hands, his shoulders. One or both of them had moved without him realizing it, and now they were huddled as if complicit or afraid. Scheming together, as Halduron always said they were.

 _A small space,_ he thought wildly, _easy to happen._ The ring Rommath had kissed was a claw where Lor’themar had draped one arm across his knees, effortlessly graceful. But Rommath felt his trembling with detachment, as if he were looking down at them both from miles above.

At last Lor’themar looked at him, but there was a darkness in his good eye, as if the shadow went far down, as if it, too, were a pit. His words came out in a tumble. “They are powerful, dark and deadly. That is what they are, and they are only grown in Quel’Thalas. Part of our land, just like us.”

He was quiet for a long, long time. Overhead the leaves skittered, rustled, breathed, and Lor’themar breathed too, almost in gasps, then added, “Nothing else ever seemed so fascinating to him again.”

When at last he trusted himself not to blurt out something stupid, Rommath spoke. “Clearly, your wits are addled by the hour.”

“Yes, I suppose it was too much to expect you to be impressed with that speech.” Lor’themar’s voice was again as smooth and hard as steel, and Rommath knew it well—the voice of feigned carelessness, learned in politics.

 _Don’t be cruel,_ Rommath told himself. “It was unexpected, let’s just say that. Didn’t you also call me a snake, once? Then some demon-prince. Now a flower. Some would accuse you of being incoherent. I wonder what I’ll be next time.”

“It’s a flower that melts skin like wax.” Lor’themar’s smile was almost bashful. “I suppose that diminishes the poetry of the moment.”

 _No. Never_. “I’m no poet.”

“Nor am I.” Lor’themar leaned his head back so that his hair tumbled across his shoulders, his chest. It mingled with the old silver of the scars at his throat until all of him gleamed like enchanted flames. _No. I am the one burning. I stood in the blaze this afternoon, and only now will I catch fire._

“Regarding your gift,” Lor’themar began again, slowly. “Perhaps an apology is an order. For that and the viper remark. It was thoughtless. I meant only to show you what I told you now.”

“I know what you meant.”

“No, you don’t, Rommath. You make that apparent every time you open your mouth.”

He realized Lor’themar had reached for him, heard the plea in his voice at the same time, and Rommath fumbled for his hands in the darkness. Pity filled him, but somehow rather than a chill it was kin to his desire. _Compassion,_ he realized.

“You are no flower or god or animal,” Lor’themar said, and laced their fingers together. Rommath felt again the callouses and old half-healed cuts. “You are a man.” His voice softened, became quiet and thin. “I value your counsel highly, and your loyalty. I trust you. You have been true to me. How many people in this world are true, really?”

“How romantic.” He sounded breathless, and still sharply mocking somehow. He licked his lips and tried again. “My—my friend. I have wanted this—” For how long? _For years._ How badly? _Badly._ How much? _More than all my words of power in a hundred thousand languages can ever express._

Lor’themar’s hands were on his face, so gentle at first Rommath thought it was his own hair blown by the wind or his own hands—across his jaw, his lips, his tangled dirty hair. He smelled himself—ashes and wood smoke—and Lor’themar—wine and sweat. No bloodthistle now, to entrap and deceive.

He ran his thumb over the high arc of Lor’themar’s cheekbone, brought his face closer. Lor’themar’s lips were chapped, dry, tangibly real when he touched them with his nails, and his stubble chafed Rommath’s face. His beard was glossy, though, like feathers on Rommath’s chin, tickling him. Even through Lor’themar’s shirt his skin was warm, the muscles locked so tight they seemed to thrum.

He was not expecting Lor’themar to kiss him—too intimate a gesture, with too much promise behind it—but when he did Rommath was young again, a boy kissing Apprentice Vilnesri behind a bust of Sterian the Bold: chaste, blundering around in an unexplored world; eyes blind, fingers tingling and numb where they gripped Lor’themar’s shoulders, pinpricks all over his skin.

Then their teeth clicked together, painfully, and Lor’themar drew back with nervous laughter. “Not my best approach. Damnation. Excuse me, Rommath.”

Hearing his name was like the shock of seawater. Suddenly he tasted bile at the back of his throat, a tight panicky knot in his chest. “Are you mad? What are you doing? Here? Someone will—” 

“See us? Let them. In the darkness, no one knows who we are.”

“If they recognize you—”

“The troubadours will write a bawd about it. My feelings will be hurt terribly, and you will have heard worse.” He stroked Rommath’s hair back from his cheeks. “I will not brag of this to anyone. I promise you, I will be discreet.”

Fire was in his cheeks, his hands, his stomach, working lower. _Kiss me again,_ he nearly commanded, even as he pushed Lor’themar’s face away, _and stop this rambling idiocy. Have it done with._  

Lor’themar’s brow was furrowed in consternation. Rommath tried to speak, failed, cleared his throat and tried again. “I refuse,” he meant to say, but then again, also, “I am yours.” It was mumbled, and he was being tugged forwards, painfully aware of himself in that instant, floating he felt so light.

He kept his eyes open until he saw, unmistakable beneath the fel glow, the black ring of Lor’themar’s iris. And even then he looked.

He had never been this close to Lor’themar before; his face was lined, even more than Rommath’s in its unnatural youth, creased. There a notch in his nose, just above the bone. Such a beloved face, with so much kindness and wisdom in it. Hard won through suffering. The face of their lord and leader.

 _Oh, Lor’themar_ , _my Lor’themar_. The name became a physical thing to him, and he thought it over and over, clung to it.

This time the kiss was different, easier somehow. His hands were at Lor’themar’s throat, tugging at his hair, and he felt strong arms on his back, holding him in his body. Rommath parted his lips, leaned forwards until all his weight was on Lor’themar’s hips. He was lost—his fire turned to water, smoke, sunlight. His joints were unknitting, and all the strength was seeping out of him. No more resistance. No more pride, no more dignity, no more pain.   

Lor’themar pulled away from him first, tugging Rommath gently back by the shoulders. “You should undress,” he said.

“So should you.”

“Together, then.”

Rommath stood, somehow not feeling the stiffness of his body. It was a relief to shrug off his robe; the air caressed his skin, though the breeze was cold without the heat of the day. He alternated between warmth and coolness, and the effect made him feel feverish.

He stepped over his clothing, feigning carelessness, yet for the first time in ages he saw himself, acutely, through another’s eyes. He had walked naked through the bathhouse in front of a dozen men every day, but this was different.

The bashfulness was pleasant, though, and he embraced it. And oh, how good it was, to feel someone else look upon him with desire. It had been so long since anyone had seen anything to approve of in him.

Lor’themar pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it into the grass, then tugged off his pants. His form was clean lines, simplicity, elven perfection: the god of the forest, broad across the shoulders, tapering into slim hips, long legs, brushed all over with blond hair that glinted like silver thread. Half erect, and perfectly built there, too.

To see him was to desire him. _And here he is._ Rommath laughed, mostly in amazement, but also in sheer delight, something he had felt too rarely it seemed. Perfect, and his, against all probability. 

That won him a scowl from Lor’themar— _and_ _what man likes to be laughed at by his lover, really?_ —but no matter, even in his anger he was beautiful. More beautiful perhaps.

Rommath stumbled towards him, graceless for once and overwhelmed, blazing with his own desire. They collided with each other, staggering. Lor’themar’s skin felt like forge-fire against his. He was here, was flesh and blood, and when Rommath slipped his hand lower to cup his cock, Lor’themar cursed into his hair, dug his fingers into Rommath’s lower back until it hurt.

“Is that good?” Rommath heard himself ask. His voice, his perfect sorcerer’s voice with the modulation of a born senator, was strangled. He moved his hands up and down Lor’themar’s length, squeezing hard, pulling. “Do you like that?”

“Demon,” Lor’themar said. He kissed Rommath’s neck, using his teeth.

 _Gently,_ he nearly said, but he did not want it gently. He wanted fury and passion. Let Lor’themar rake his flesh, flay him, break his bones and suck out the marrow. If the pyre could not take him, let him be taken now. He grit his teeth, moved closer so that they were pressed together, his shoulder into Lor’themar’s collar bone, Rommath’s hip into the curve of his thigh, letting his own cock slide against the hollow of Lor’themar’s groin.

“You are snarling at me,” Lor’themar said, but he sounded dazed and his eye was glassy. He was sweating too, now, and under Rommath’s hands his skin was damp, slippery. When Rommath slid a hand around to squeeze his ass, Lor’themar rocked back on his heels, sucking in his breath—then tipped and almost fell. He caught himself with one leg behind him, off-balance.

Rommath bit his tongue. _Don’t laugh at him again; he did not like that._ “Careful,” Rommath said, righting him as well as he could—he was no weakling, but Lor’themar was taller than he, and heavier besides. Their feet slipped in the wet grass, and Lor’themar had to catch them both, partly grabbing Rommath, partly clinging to him.

“This will not work,” Lor’themar said, looking around. His eye was wild, the pupil dark and wide. “On the cloak.”

Obedient servant of the regency he was, Rommath did so. The dew had soaked through already, and it clung to his back when he lay down.

For a moment he felt vulnerable, almost afraid. Naked in the woods, his skin prickling from the wind, his sometime-rival sometime-ally looming over him in the darkness, a one-eyed silhouette. Utterly known, and, suddenly, banal. If Rommath did not carry the scepter of power and all the trappings of his office he was just a man, middle-aged to most eyes, not handsome.

Then Lor’themar lay down beside him, the hairs on his arms scraping Rommath’s side, and the moment passed, and the fire consumed him again, and he was blessed beyond any reasonable wish. Lor’themar’s skin was nothing like velvet—notched and scarred, firm muscles beneath a layer of skin and fat.

Rommath took handfuls of Lor’themar’s hair, greedy, pulled from the temple and the crown, tilted his head back to bite the sharp angle of his jaw, ran his tongue up the edge of his ear to taste the point.

“My friend. Listen.” Lor’themar pressed himself harder against Rommath’s side, even as he pulled his face away. “Tell me. If you wish anything at all, I will give it to you with a glad heart.”

A distinctly arousing offer. He imagined Lor’themar on his back beneath him, one leg tossed up over Rommath’s shoulder, face twisted. _I could take him_. The thought made heat roar in his ears, his face, made something dark in him stir. He had never even dared dream of it, and here it was, offered up to him.

But pragmatism won out. He extricated himself from the tangle of their arms, regretful. Already the sweat was cold on his back and neck. “The woods are not the place for exciting experiments. I might hurt you.”

Lor’themar gave a laugh he had never heard before, almost sinister. “You, hurt someone? You would never.”

“Not you at least.”

“Why not?” Lor’themar gave him a mocking look, but it was not playful. “Are you afraid you might like it?”

“Maybe I am. But I’m telling you, not tonight.” Rommath did not say, _Another time._ Perhaps there would be no other time. Midsummer meant nothing, he must remember that, take what he was offered and be grateful. “Lie back and be still. What I wish right now is to have a look at you.”

“An old man like me.” But Lor’themar’s visible eye was narrowed in amusement still. “Said the pot to the kettle, I suppose.”

As Rommath had suspected, without his fine armor Lor’themar was beginning to show his age. His abdomen was not precisely rock hard, and on closer inspection a few of the curls between his legs were grey, not platinum. But he was still perfect, the ideal ranger, long and strong. The ragged scar that bisected his face, partly concealed by his eye patch, softened some of the prettiness of his features, as did the harsh angles of his cheekbones and his chin.

Rommath let his fingers slip under the patch. Beneath it, Lor’themar’s skin was damp, and it felt soft and puffy. Morbid curiosity gripped him. “Let me take this off,” he said.

Lor’themar tensed but did not move. “If you are certain. You will not enjoy it.”

“I am certain.” He hooked his fingers under the band and tugged the patch loose, looping it up around Lor’themar’s ear to toss it away. Rommath saw immediately why he had warned against it: Lor’themar had not worn a glass eye tonight and the socket gaped open, wet and red save for where his eyelashes bristled. The upper lid drooped and the whole thing was sunken, a well of shadow.

“Ugly,” Lor’themar said. His skin seemed to have cooled somewhat, and he raised his shoulders.

“Stupid boy,” Rommath said. “You have not seen real ugliness.” He leaned forwards so that he was pinning Lor’themar down and let his nails trace the edges of the scar, careful to keep his fingers away from the place where Lor’themar’s eye had been. Without something filling the socket it was obvious the skin had healed badly: it was raised and uneven, the skin in pink blotches, sagging inwards.

 _Ugly, yes. I want him anyway._ Rommath let himself tilt forwards until they were hip to hip, touching. He took Lor’themar’s hand and placed it on his cock, exhaling in a rush when he felt rough fingers brush against him. “Ugliness thrills me, I’ve heard said.”

“I hear many things about you,” Lor’themar said, and made his hand a fist. _Oh, Light-blessed ancestors_. “I wonder if any of it is true. Well, I will soon see.”

Lor’themar ran fingers over his length, and had he been bashful earlier? Rommath twisted, choked, hissed some foul oath. Animal warmth rose in him, and he thrust his hips downwards, burning, biting the inside of his cheek until his teeth ached and he tasted blood.

His consciousness collapsed to that one point, the friction between his legs, the motion of his hips, the ache to come. Lor’themar’s warmth was a counterpoint to the wind; the night air on his back was gentle compared to the rough, almost harsh motion on his cock.

Somewhere, he knew he did not want it to end so soon. But he was still dismayed when Lor’themar pulled his hand away suddenly, leaving him cold again and aching.

“Not like this,” Lor’themar said. “Lie on your back. Spread your legs.”

 _Like the dream,_ Rommath thought. The cloak had shifted, and one of his shoulders touched wet grass. In the moonlight he saw himself suddenly, dark legs written with dark lines, gleaming with sweat, tendons standing out. _Pleasing. Yes. I am pleasing._  

Instead of straddling his hips, though, Lor’themar shifted down and climbed over him so that he was kneeling between Rommath’s knees. Like this there was no ignoring their nudity, and it shamed him and thrilled him. Lor’themar moved forwards somewhat awkwardly, cock bobbing.

Rommath recognized the motion, and it made him tense with anticipation and fear both. _Like this? Here, truly?_ “What are you planning to do?” he asked.

Lor’themar ran his finger over one of the lines on the inside of his thighs, making him tremble, and did not answer. “Did these hurt?” he asked.

“These?” Rommath touched one of the marks on his arm. “Yes. Not terribly, but they hurt. Runic symbols, for protection.”

 “They are… interesting. I like them.” Judging by his expression, Lor’themar more than liked them. “Lie back, now.”

 Surrender did not come easily to him, but in this case Rommath made the attempt. He pressed his eyes closed, telling himself to relax, that this was a joy to him even if it was a pain. Pain was power, blood magi knew that well. _Power. Yes. I’ll have this hold over him. I can wield this influence, later, bend him to my will in court._

Instead of blunt pressure, though, he felt lips on his skin, across his stomach, over the tendon that stood on the inside of his thigh, tracing the lines of his tattoos. Warm, just a flutter.

He shifted, trying to meet the kisses, but Lor’themar only laughed and moved away, kissed the hollow of Rommath’s knee—a long, deep kiss. And, finally, when Rommath thought he might kill him in mad frustration, Lor’themar kissed his way back up the other leg and over his length, tasting the head.

Then all was heat, wet and caressing. Rommath moaned before he could stop himself, reached down to stroke Lor’themar’s hair. It was sand scattering over Rommath’s bare legs, across his stomach, a swirl of seaweed, Lor’themar’s lips a damp seal on his skin. This time, when Rommath said, “Yes,” it was a snake’s hiss.

With embarrassing speed he approached his edge. He tried to keep the pace with Lor’themar’s movements, but too soon his own movements turned jerky, spasmodic. A sort of desperation gripped him, a pleasure so intense it was almost painful, denial and desire. He kicked his leg out, turned his nails into claws for drawing blood and dug them into Lor’themar’s shoulders, heard himself gasp, once, loudly. He went over the edge, shuddering as he came.

Distantly, he realized Lor’themar had not pulled away, did not pull away until at last the lights faded from Rommath’s vision. Then he turned and, discreetly, in no great rush, spat in the grass.

“Merciful Light,” Rommath said, hoarsely, but at least he sounded like himself again.

Lor’themar was straightening his beard with his fingers. “That sounds like the comment of a satisfied man.”

“To say the least.” He sat up. The stars were throbbing in his eyes still. Lor’themar’s mouth felt seared into his skin. Flesh memory. Rommath wanted to kiss him, to embrace him, but stopped himself. “That was wonderful. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” One of Lor’themar’s eyes was shadow, but the other was full of light, wide and full. Hard to read beneath the fel glow. Fixed on Rommath, though. That must count for something.

* * *

_Beauty reigns eternal,_ Rommath thought, once, with perfect clarity. The only clarity of the evening, muted as it was by the buzz of the city, the thrum of crickets.

He had kissed Lor’themar again at one point, gripped his length in one hand, held him down with the other. “All things have their reward,” Rommath told him. “You served me well.”

In his pleasure Lor’themar laughed often and easily, and he did, then, too. A different man when he was happy: his face was more open, mischievous almost. Rommath could tell then how hard the office had treated him, could see, ghostlike, the image of who he might have been in another world. “You are too generous,” Lor’themar said.

Rommath wet his fingers in his mouth—imperfect, but it would do for this. He spread Lor’themar’s legs gently, moved his hand into the cleft of his ass, pushing slowly at his entrance but with steady force. Just fingers, but the grip on them was a torment. Inside he was warm, tight, not as slick as might be preferred. _I must be gentle, careful_. Lor’themar was wincing, but in Rommath’s hand he was iron. _Me, gentle. Imagine that._

But he was.

When Lor’themar had finished with a shiver almost like a wince and Rommath had reclaimed his fingers, Lor’themar opened his eyes again: the living one and the empty one. It was appropriate. For a moment they looked at each other, two animals face to face in the woods, strangers, incapable of recognition, and Rommath almost wished to stay that way forever. Unaccountable and unknown.

But Lor’themar sighed and stretched shook the twigs from his hair. “A rest, now,” he said. “I’ve been defeated, I think. The stories about you are true, and I have been well-schooled in this art.”

A little breathless, Rommath climbed off him. After such close contact it felt oddly good to be separate again—as if he had, once more, to readjust to being a single man. Never before had he realized how close the act was, how easily his own body became another’s, how fine the line between them could grow until it shifted, blended. 

 _You knew it once, but you forgot. Is it good to remember it once more?_ No, not good. It did not feel good. He wanted himself back. The sharing had been intense—dangerously so—but ultimately it changed nothing.

His skin was sticky from perspiration, his hair full of mud. Somehow that did not matter. The cloak had long since tangled and knotted and been cast aside, so he lay on his back on the wet grass. Cold, now, from sweat. Overhead the trees clattered and the leaves twisted, green-black. He shivered a little, and wondered if he was getting ill.

_Are you laughing at me, Lord Vathecor? Your infatuated son? And you, Kael? Have I betrayed your memory at last?_

They were pointed questions, but they caused him no pain. Everything in him was dulled, tired. _Someone might have heard us. What then?_

But then, perhaps not. The night was full of noises, Lor’themar was right. A cat was yowling close at hand, and another one answered in a hiss. Somewhere above them an owl hooted. Butterflies floated by, and massive scarlet moths with a wingspan as long as Rommath’s forearm, and nightbirds with silvery eyes that flashed in the darkness. Their calls were high, fluting.

He reached over and felt the ridge of Lor’themar’s hip with his palm, slid his hand up to touch the curved wing-like rise of his collarbones. A man is just a man, in the end: just flesh, just muscle. Paper stretched over a brittle frame. A strange realization for Rommath, who had loved ladies and kings in their beds.

 _I could rip him apart._ With his nails or his teeth, with magical fire. _I could and I will not_. Drunk on strength, on beauty, and the mirror-reflection of his own gifts that was the fragility of another, Rommath's power and his evil and his pride. Then pride giving way, at last, to tenderness.

He turned over, itching and dirty where the grass had pressed into his skin, and kissed Lor’themar’s cheek.

“You seem troubled,” Lor’themar said. “Not by this, I hope.”

“Not troubled. I wonder if Aethas had a good night as well. Somehow I doubt it.”

“Poor Aethas. You are unduly hard with him.”

 _Poor me_. Spent, weary and naked Rommath’s own heart was no more transparent to him than it had been an hour past. Something enormous was crouching over him, a shadow, too familiar. Now the pain was back, as stark as it had been before. Known, yet still so alien. _He could have me a million times, but would he ever understand me better? Would I understand him?_

“You _are_ troubled,” Lor’themar remarked. “I can tell.”

Rommath touched his mouth. “Seer.”

“You mock me.”

“Of course. Always. You deserve it. You love me for it.”

“Then share your burden with me, and your burden will be halved.”

 _Will it?_ He was not so sure about that. In the moment Lor’themar had given himself up Rommath’s doubts and fears had melted in that all-consuming heat. But now they were themselves again, and Rommath was Rommath, and he had walked his own road to this point. And that road was not Lor’themar’s.

"Dalaran," he admitted anyway. "I have been thinking of Dalaran. Going back there was unsettling, to say the least."

"I can imagine."

 _No, you can’t._ But Lor’themar ran his hand down Rommath’s throat, over his chest, let it rest on his stomach. Already there was itching stubble there. Lor’themar’s hand was heavy, large and warm, and it felt like a reminder of his closeness, a fragment preserved.

The physical contact was easy now, when earlier it had been so difficult. Already calm, it calmed Rommath further.

“I am sorry I was unkind to you,” Lor’themar said. “With the mask. I could tell you were hurt.”

“You were unkind. I was cruel.”

“You spoke from pain. That was obvious.”

 _It doesn’t excuse it._ “I’m… also sorry.” It was not as hard to say as he might have thought. “Thank you for everything. Including the ill-conceived gift.”

“Oh, don’t thank me. It was a joy for me, also.”

A joy.  _Maybe those tauren fools are right. Maybe life and death come together. Maybe this is the price we pay for our power and our beauty, for carrying on when anyone else would have been ground into the dirt._ Dalaran had chewed up Rommath and spat him out, but here he was, still standing. What was a little sadness in the end?

Rommath did not remember sleeping, but he must have. There was light in the sky when at last Lor’themar pulled away from him, brushing the grass and dirt from his skin.

“I am filthy,” Lor’themar said quietly. The weeds had left lines on his back and arms, fine and straight like the brush of a lash. He had thrown his shirt in one direction, his pants in another, and he beat the soil and damp from them with a grimace.

Rommath watched him dress, unwilling to look away. For a moment he thought of his dream, and of the towers of his home. “Obviously I can’t go to Orgrimmar with you now.”

Lor’themar froze, then looked up, slowly. “What?”

“You heard me.” He could not say it again, had to. “I will not be coming with you. This changes matters.”

Lor’themar’s mouth fell open, and, distantly, Rommath knew a smug brittle pleasure that he could still surprise Lor’themar after so many years. “Oh, no. Not more of these games. I don’t have the patience.”

“I don’t play games.” He sat up and wrapped the wet cloak around his bare shoulders. Still the chill threatened to overcome him. “If any of your enemies get word of this, they’ll use it crush you.”

“What?” It came out in a rush, half a laugh. “Are you mad? Why?”

“You’re being a child. You know exactly why, if you just think for a moment. Men will say this is my work, my magic.” Who would believe otherwise? It was a simple enchantment to weave, basic blood magic, though vile and evil. Still easier to believe Rommath capable of such ruthlessness than to believe him capable of wooing a good lord. “They’ll say I’m the true power in Quel’Thalas, that I rule you and the country through you.”

Lor’themar was unmoved. “They have said that for ten years.”

 _And this is proof_. Once this symbol of his total power would have thrilled him, but now it only filled him with a silent, icy dread.

“You are afraid.” Lor’themar crossed the clearing and sat down beside him. His hand was warm and calloused on Rommath’s back, comforting. Too comforting. “Fine. We will keep it a secret, then.”

 _There are no secrets_. A competent mage could ferret his or her way into anything, and magi numbered among the fiercest of Rommath’s foes. “And what then, Lor’themar? I follow you to Orgrimmar. We sneak about like thieves. No one finds it odd that I’ve given up my honours to go traipsing after you.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Outsiders may be simpletons, but they’re not dead.”

Lor’themar was looking at him with such open dismay it might have been amusing. His lips were parted a little, eyes narrowed, brows drawn down. “Then who would you have me bring as my right hand, if not you? You would put me in a weak position. It will look suspect.”

“Oh, stop it. As far as I can recall, there were two of us as of yesterday morning. Take Halduron. You can make me your regent. Why not? What a fitting reward for this night, no?”

Lor’themar fortunately did not rise to _that_ bait. “Halduron is a boy.” There was no contempt in the words, only affection and sadness. “A good, honest, innocent boy, with a kind heart.”

 _And my heart is dead._ How strange that the thing that made him so valuable should, in the end, be his grief. “You’re right. He is too principled. I can recommend a magister to go with you, then. Vesara will still serve.

“It is you I want.”

“Yes. You want me. You don’t need me.” It was a relief, finally, to say so. “You’re a better leader than I’d ever have been.” He could say nothing else but this, and even this was hard. “I used to imagine that Kael’thas was Dath’Remar come again. Now I know you are.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I never lie. Not to you. Not anymore.”

Lor’themar cupped his cheek. His hand was shaking. “You will not reconsider?”

“Absolutely not. I’ve decided.”

Rommath realized he was still completely naked and rose, turning away both to hide his expression and to avoid seeing Lor’themar’s.

He had dropped his robes on the ground; when he bent to retrieve them they were cold and soaked. No question of what he had been up to this night for any who saw him: disheveled, dirty, damp, probably looking well-tumbled in the bargain.

When they were both dressed, there was nothing to do but say their farewells. The most awkward part yet—somewhat composed, partially clothed, he could recognize Lor’themar as the man who stood opposite him in the assembly, the lord he sometimes argued with and often supported. The magic of the evening had faded, left in its wake dull, cold reality. Too much light already, and a piercing headache.

And something else, in Rommath, uncomfortable now. All pain, no pleasure, no give.

“Rommath,” Lor’themar said. “This evening was unlooked for and unplanned. Believe me.”

“I believe you. As if you could plan this.”

Lor’themar gave him a wounded look. “I meant that I am grateful that it happened. And I will not forget it.”

 _Fool, thrice-damned fool._ “You should,” Rommath told him. “Go home and forget it. It was a dream you had, nothing more.”

“Doubtful. My dreams are never this sweet.” Lor’themar patted his collar back into place and began adjusting the buttons. “You know I won’t. Will you?”

 _Yes,_ Rommath wanted to say. Instead he said the truth yet again: “I’ll try. Perhaps when you return from Orgrimmar, I will remember again.”

“I have no doubt you will try hard.” Lor’themar’s gaze had turned distant—or perhaps he was occupied with the struggle to tame his hair, which was hanging in knots around his ears. “Is it wisdom or cunning or just malice that makes you behave as you do? I don’t think I will ever know.”

“We’ve been over this. It’s not malice. I’m advising you. You can call it wisdom if you’d like. I don’t care.”

Overhead the moon was beginning its descent. Already the horizon was blue-green in the east. Soon the sun would rise, and this night would end. All the shadows would flee, displaced by harsh reality.

Yet for now the world was this single moment, enclosed on itself, complete. Lor’themar stood at its centre, starlight and silver, more beautiful than belief. “I’ve learned too much,” Rommath said, “and I know too little. But I know this. Your black lily is a killer. And men are killers, too.”

* * *

Rommath slept late, blessedly late, and no one disturbed him save a servant coming in with a tray of fruits and breakfast wine. She took one look at him on the divan, sprawled like a boy, and went to his windows to lower the blinds. The room darkened, cooled, and he blinked at the ceiling, the dust swirling like motes of arcane residue.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, and dropped off again.

By the time he woke most of the afternoon was gone and the bells were tolling half-past-four. He had not slept a day away since he was a mere arcanist. He wondered if his guards had resumed their positions outside, and who had come to see him and been rebuffed. There would be a line of magisters awaiting his pleasure, but they could wait a little longer. What matter? Their lives were endless days.

There was quiet in him, stillness all around. In his office nothing moved, and from far away the city’s noises echoed: music, vendors, hawkstriders. _Like being underwater. Like a man who has drowned and no longer feels fear or pain_. His peace was part melancholy—waking in the dark gold of early evening did that to him.

He pushed himself off the divan, cringing, sore all over from lying on the ground. When he went to his bath and stripped off his muddy robes he noticed bruises on his arms, around his waist, already turning yellow. There was a welt on the inside of his leg, painful when he touched it. The evening’s brands. They would heal.

If he had been dirty the day before he was positively filthy now. As soon as he stepped into the water it darkened. He scraped the soil and ash from his skin with a soft stone, watching it flake away and settle at the bottom of the pool. His ears he scrubbed until they stung and turned bright red in the mirror, and his hair was so knotted it took him nearly an hour to work out the snarls. Twice he had to drain the bath and refill it, but he did not dare call for a servant. _One look at me and they’ll know_.

By the time Rommath was done the light that spilled from under his blinds was white wine, and for a long time he lay there, bathed in it as much as the warm water _._ The marble of the pool was cool on his back, and he floated, his hair drifting around him.

The past night seemed unreal; he had forgotten segments of it, confused who had said what, done what. _He kissed me—or was it the other way around?_ Perhaps he had rehearsed it so often in his mind the whole thing was become a young legend already, now, stripped of its reality and turned into myth. Not two elves but nymphs or mermen or gods stumbling upon each other in a wood that never existed.

That upset him. It had been real, he knew it. “A dream you had,” Rommath had said, but whose dream?

 _I must get him a gift_ , he realised. In the festival’s spirit of giving, in thanks, and in parting all. It seemed that in the end, even the god of monsters could not let go without a token.

* * *

Gold and jewels Rommath had in plenty, more than he had ever dreamed in his highborn-but-impoverished youth. But so did Lor’themar. They would mean nothing to give, nothing to take.

Something different, then. Made with his own hands.

A fletcher would show recognition of the Farstrider in him, the thing Rommath had tried so long to stamp out. But it might be taken as mockery, since Lor’themar would no more be going into battle. Trappings for his hawkstrider or a sheath for his sword all had the same problem. An animal would make the same point without the biting irony, but where to get something special enough for a regent at this late hour?

In the end, though, it was Uncle Bedlam of all people who gave him the idea.

Bedlam had enjoyed Midsummer as well, and he made it abundantly clear. “I want to meet elven girls,” he’d said a week prior, and he kept up the chant until Tae’thelan Bloodwatcher made it known that the next time Bedlam insulted sin’dorei womanhood would be his last time breathing.

Even Rommath had rolled his eyes and balked—but somehow, Bedlam had had his way. He drifted around Quel’Thalas, a bevy of laughing beauties in tow, pleased with himself and pleased with the world.

That very night he arrived in Rommath’s office—alone, thank the Light—grinning and carrying his _fethesi_ board. “You’ve abandoned me!” he barked, laughing, when Rommath invited him in. “Friend, I’ve had no one to play with! I went to the park, and not one of the greybeards was any sport!”

After his bath Rommath had retreated into his work, burying himself in preparations for Lor’themar’s trip to Orgrimmar. _I was right. I can’t go with him, now_. That was a relief, in a way—the magisters needed firm handling, and though he trusted Hathorel he did not trust all his underlings equally—but it also made him think of the long, empty months when Lor’themar would be absent.

 _I will write to him. I will be busy_. _Time will pass and I’ll forget._ None of that made it easier.

Rommath allowed Bedlam to set up the board in his sun parlor, and together they laid out the three-hundred pieces: black and gold phoenixes, princes and princesses, magisters and spellbreakers and ballistae, ships and chariots. There was something soothing about the orderliness of it, the efficiency, the neat, uniform rows. “I could use a good game of _fethesi_ , frankly,” Rommath said.

“Bored and under-stimulated, right?”

“In need of a victory,” Rommath said, smirking.

“Oh-ho. We’ll see about that victory. We’ll see.”

Rommath used a different opening this time—a closed, conservative one, meant to lure Bedlam out. If it came down to a contest of patience, an elf would win every time. Whenever he lost to Bedlam it was because he allowed himself to be pulled too quickly into the center of the board where he could be outflanked and outmaneuvered. Caution, not aggression, was Rommath’s ally here.

“Now that’s a tedious arrangement.” Bedlam surveyed the board, frowning. “You’ve had a good holiday, friend?”

“Not much of a holiday.” Rommath gestured in the direction of his office. “I’ve been stuck here. By choice, of course. But yes, it was good.”

“I’ve enjoyed your city a lot. I’ll be sorry to leave, you know. Duty awaits.”

 _Duty._ Rommath studied him. “What duty is that?”

Bedlam shrugged and swapped one of his archers with a mounted knight. “Serving the trade prince. That means paperwork, mostly. Old Gallywix had his fingers in a good many pies, so we’ve been tracking down his expenses, confiscating his property. That sort of thing.”

“For the good of the Horde, I’m sure.”

“Hey, I don’t appreciate your tone!” But Bedlam gave him a wink. “For the good of Trade Prince Hardwrench, too.”

Bedlam had moved the high king out early, as he always did, and it was currently menacing an entire column on Rommath’s side. He studied it, unhappy, but it was well pinned: defended by two lesser foot soldiers. He slid his phoenix sideways for support, then said, “Am I to understand you want to live serving Miss Hardwrench?”

“Am I to understand that you want to live serving Mr. Theron?”

“I would die serving him _._ ” In his heart, Rommath was a servant—a highborn and noble and cunning servant with underlings of his own, but a servant nonetheless. He found meaning, sometimes even joy in his duties.

Bedlam, though, was a different matter. He looked almost embarrassed by that answer. “Okay. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”

“I’ll hope it more fervently than anyone, I’m sure. You didn’t answer my question. No Trade Prince Bedlam?”

Bedlam laughed, but it sounded strained. Or maybe that was just because he had to pull his high king into a retreat before Rommath’s knight. “Look, are you asking if I’ve considered it? Because the answer is, I have. But let’s look at the history of the position. Riggingcrank was killed by Maldy, who was in turn thrown over by Gallywix. Gallywix got the chop and was followed by Sassy Hardwrench who will, I’m sure, have her own turn on the block. Do I like power? Yeah. I also like fine meals, good wine, sweet goblin girls, and expensive sheets, all of which a trade prince gets in abundance. But I like to live most of all.”

“I sympathise,” Rommath said.

“I’m so glad.”

“It’s probably my best-known characteristic in these parts.”

Bedlam gave him a crooked grin. “Maybe that’s why we’re friends.”

 _Are we friends?_ Rommath did not know; elven friendships took years to build, slow and ornate and fussy things, full of false starts and dead ends, as intricate and intense as any courtship among the other peoples. But friendship was a powerful thing, and far be it from Rommath to throw aside an offered shield. 

Neither of them spoke for a while—lost in thoughts or, in Bedlam’s case, seemingly lost in contemplation of the game. Rommath kept his ranks closed as tightly as possible, yet Bedlam seemed to understand what he was doing, and he forced Rommath into exchanges that chipped away at his foot soldiers. Each time he lost, Bedlam lost—yet he had no choice but to move his stronger pieces forwards, which was exactly what he’d wanted to avoid.

“Gossip says Gorgonna’s feeling the heat,” Bedlam said at last. “Some of the orcs are saying she’s not strong enough to be warchief.”

That was a dangerous thing to say, especially here, in Silvermoon—Lor’themar had been one of the leaders who supported her claim over Rexxar’s or Vol’jin’s, even after his own name was advanced. “Don’t listen to gossip.”

“Unfortunately, this gossip comes from Ogrimmar, so it smacks unpleasantly of truth. People are saying, hey, maybe it’s not such a good idea to let the Alliance have a say in the governing of the Horde.”

 _They may have a point_. But no, Rommath was Lor’themar’s servant and spoke with his voice before outsiders. “Are these people you?”

Bedlam gave him an unimpressed look. “Do I look like the sort who screams about ‘blood and thunder’?”

Rommath sat back and folded his hands across his stomach. “If I recall, Lady Hardwrench was against Gorgonna’s appointment.”

“As you yourself reminded me, I’m an advisor, not a leader, meaning Sassy does what she likes.” Bedlam’s forehead furrowed. “Believe it or not, I like this warchief. She’s a smart woman, and she’s tough but not bloodthirsty. She was bright enough to understand that no one would stick around for a second Garrosh, and she really listens to us.”

“I have heard the same.” Liadrin, who was in Orgrimmar, reported that the warchief was unfailingly polite to her, considered her propositions, and treated her with as much respect as she treated Saurfang. _He must absolutely adore that._ “It’s strange.”

Bedlam looked up from the board. “What?”

“How something as small as addressing a man as an equal can make him fight for you. And something as small as insulting him can make him bray for your blood.”

Bedlam stroked his phoenix’s head, and Rommath thought, _Yes, bring it out, I will crush it._ “Isn’t strange at all. Everyone wants to believe that they’re wise beyond everyone else—the most cunning, the most brilliant. Garrosh never let you have that illusion. He knew he wanted to be the hero—and he wanted you to know it, too.”

“I think it’s perhaps more than that.” Rommath watched as Bedlam slid a princess forwards to assault a pair of magisters, then supported them. “We’re the leavings of the world, you and I and all our dear barbarian brothers and sisters. I don’t need to be treated like trash’s trash.”

“You and your damn pride.” Bedlam snorted. “One day it’s going to get you in trouble.”

“And one day you’ll see that I was right all along, and that your dignity is the only thing that can’t be taken from you.”

“Yeah. The noose you carry around in your back pocket and wrap obligingly around your own neck. Would it kill you to bow and kiss a few fingers and smile? I think not.”

“I once thought the same,” Rommath told him. “I thought there was nothing I wasn’t capable of doing to survive. But I learned. Adversity makes you cleave to your true self. Somewhat unfortunately for most of us. Sometimes it makes you wise, but mostly it makes you worse.”

Bedlam gave a noncommittal noise—he seemed more concerned with evading the row of spellbreakers Rommath had moved two rounds ago. Rommath studied him, pleased with the beads of sweat on his forehead, the little grimaces of frustration he made. _I may win yet._

Bedlam was so engrossed in the table Rommath was almost surprised when he spoke. “Speaking of gossip, I hear you have a trip to Orgrimmar coming up.”

Rommath looked up, slowly, to give himself time to conceal his surprise. “You’ve heard wrong.”

“Hm.” Bedlam was studying the _fethesi_ board, fingers steepled so Rommath could not see his mouth. “I don’t think so.”

The certainty in his voice could not be faked—which meant he knew of Lor’themar’s request, but not their evening in the garden. _Not yet, at least_. The very thought made him ill. “I’d like to know where you heard this.”

Bedlam laughed. “Yeah, I’ll bet you do.”

 _Is he spying on me? A magical plant, perhaps?_ That would explain why he knew of their first conversation, but not their second—Rommath’s personal wards would have defeated a lesser mage’s attempts to scry on him. Then again, the regent’s offices were protected by abjurers who should have been more than capable of defeating routine surveillance.

 _Unless they have been bought_ … _Would my magi stoop so very low?_ “It seems there are a great number of talkative little birds in the Spire,” Rommath said. “Senseless tittering. You’ll find my people are outstanding at making noise. Don’t heed it.”

“Birds?” Bedlam gave a sly smile. “Isn’t Theron supposed to be related to some big hawk? Maybe your regent isn’t as subtle as you thought.”

Well, there was always that. _Lor’themar, how did you manage to let this slip?_ “Regrettably, your information is wrong. I’ve no intention of leaving Silvermoon.”

Bedlam raised his eyebrows. “That’s a real shame. There are a lot of opportunities in Orgrimmar, especially for a smart man like you.”

“A smart man like me doesn’t go racing into danger.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.” Bedlam directed a pointed look at the _fethesi_ board. “Can I advise you, though? I mean, I guess that’s a bit forward. But would you listen to my opinion?”

Rommath fought the urge to laugh in his face. _As if I need a goblin’s council._ “As you wish.”

“Fine. My opinion, then. Go to Orgrimmar with your regent. He’s a really good guy. I like him. Definitely smooth, because Hellscream liked him too, I think. Really, who doesn’t like Lor’themar?”

 _‘Like’ may not be the word I’d use for myself_. “I’m listening.”

“Yeah, as I said. I like Lor’themar. But Lor’themar has a lot of scruples. He’s good, but he’s not always clever. That business with pardoning those traitors? Not clever. Where is Fanlyr Silverthorn now, can you tell me that?”

In fact, Rommath could not. “That’s highly sensitive information. If you needed to know, you’d know.”

“So sensitive none of _you_ know it, I bet. Look, that’s what I mean. You sent him scurrying away? Bad move. Lor’themar and the warchief will both need your wits if they’re doing stupid stuff like that. I mean, how many wizards are there in Orgrimmar at the best of times? And half of them died with Hellscream. I don’t like that. That makes me nervous.”

“I had no idea you cared so much about Silvermoon and her children,” Rommath said. The saddest attempt at manipulation he had ever been party to, and not remotely persuasive.

“Silvermoon has grown on me. And her ‘children’ too, though excuse me for being rude, you’re the oldest child I’ve ever met.”

 _I should have seen this coming_ , Rommath thought, pushing one of his magisters out to intercept Bedlam’s prince. He had learned before not to underestimate non-elves, possessed, as they were, of a certain wiliness. He ought to have learned it better.

“The magister is a powerful piece,” Bedlam said, still looking at the board. “Like the real world, right? I’ve been reading your history. I had no idea how prominent your position was. The grand magister has a lot of influence.”

“True.” He had to swallow his anger. To Aethas Sunreaver, to his apprentices he could exercise the full extent of his wrath, but not with an honoured guest. Still—he, the grand magister, spied upon. _I will do you a bad turn for this, I swear_. “It’s a well-respected title.”

Bedlam was watching him. “A lot of influence, I mean.” He tapped his nails against the table’s marble surface. “Why aren’t _you_ regent?”

Of all the questions Rommath had been expecting, that was not among them. Off-guard, his instinct was to be sarcastic. “A fair question, given the populace’s vast love for me.”

“Don’t try and change the subject.” Bedlam actually sounded annoyed. “I mean, I get that’s an issue _now_ , but what about before? When you arrived back in Silvermoon. They must have been throwing themselves at your feet. Their savior, right?”

“Only the savior’s messenger.” The topic was too painful to him still. _This one knows much. Too much_. 

In truth, he had wondered the same thing for a long time. No matter how often he had turned it over in his head he had never been able to come up with a satisfying answer. Did Kael see, against all probability, that Lor’themar was what their people needed—a break with the past, someone bold yet reflective, compassionate but able to do what he had to? Or did he merely fear the power of a rival mage given Quel’Thalas’s highest title?

“Pointless to think about,” Rommath said. “I don’t waste my time on things that are past. And neither should you, if you’re smart.”

“Maybe I’m not.” Bedlam shrugged and pushed himself away from the table and board, slipping off his chair and stretching. “I’m stiff as a pipe, man. Break time, I think. Fancy a smoke?”

“Of what?” Rommath asked, wary.

“Not your foul bloodthistle, that’s for damned sure. Tastes like shit.” Bedlam was already picking his way around the piles of books Rommath had left on the floor, heading towards the opening of the balcony. Some of the stacks stood taller than him. “No offense or anything. It’s just some plain tobacco.”

“Tobacco suits me far better,” Rommath said, rising himself now. “Yes. A break would serve me well.”

Outside they looked out over the city together—or at least Rommath did. The top of the rail towered well over Bedlam’s head, but he made no complaint. “Hell, so good that you guys stopped lighting those fires. I thought you were trying to cook me alive in here.”

“We were. Goblin roast. Our greatest delicacy. You were wondering about the mysterious soups.”

“Very funny,” said Bedlam, and held up his pipe. Rommath bent to light it with a spark between his fingers. As he did he examined it. It was ivory, almost white, finely polished and with an ebony mouthpiece. The colours were different, but the style he recognized as soon as he touched it.

“This pipe is like Lor’themar’s,” Rommath said.

“Oh?” Bedlam cocked an eyebrow. “Cleverly spotted. Yeah, it’s by the same maker. You must be a connoisseur of pipes or something. Or have you just smoked his a few too many times?”

 _More like he smoked mine._ Rommath was too practiced to lapse by blushing or looking away. “His pipe is simple and modest, I meant. Of course, his is also disgusting, which yours is not.”

“Disgusting?” Bedlam laughed. “I find that hard to believe. Well, I’m a simple, modest man. Not like Lor’themar, who parades around like a triumphant prince, kissing babies and maidens.”

 _You’re wrong_. Lor’themar was modest still, amazingly so, even after all these years of leadership and power. He had changed in a thousand ways, but not this one. The mantle of office always seemed to sit heavily on his shoulders; even as he adjusted to the weight, it did not diminish. _He is that token man whom adversity makes wiser, the rare and blessed one._ “A gift, I assume. This is of elven make.”

“Yeah, Brightwing got it for me. Pretty, hey? Such a nice guy.”

 _Nice_ was one of the few comments about Halduron Rommath would not dispute. “Truly, he is.”

“Haw! That sounded grudging. That’s not what he says about _you_.”

It was so like Halduron to get in digs at him to a foreign dignitary. _Childish and heedless._ Rommath ignored the comment, but made a note to speak to Halduron about it later. “Do you play _fethesi_ with him?”

“With Brightwing? No way. He’s totally mediocre at it. I mean, in the beginning, we did, but after I started beating him he developed this really strange aversion to it. I wonder why.”

“I’m sure many elves feel similarly. You have an unusual talent for the game.”

“Unusual for a goblin, you mean?” Bedlam pressed his lips together in seeming disapproval. “I like to imagine I’m a fairly clever guy.” 

“I didn’t say you weren’t.” Bedlam still looked unimpressed, so Rommath continued, “I told you before that I have been playing for centuries. Yet a few months here, and sometimes you can outmaneuver me. You have to admit, it is odd and impressive.”

As before he thought of Modera, and he gestured for Bedlam to hand him the pipe. _So clever at organizing your forces. So good at fleeing the field at the first sign of danger._ If he had seen her in Dalaran he’d have torn out her throat with his nails—but he did not see her. She had known, as she always did, when to show her face and when to run away.

“I guess it is a bit odd,” Bedlam said. “But maybe not as odd as you think.”

“No?” When Bedlam wasn’t looking, Rommath scrubbed the pipe’s mouthpiece with his sleeve.

“Yeah. Look, I have something to show you, actually.”

Bedlam was fishing around in one of his sleeves, and Rommath expected him to draw out a coin or a parcel or a magical trinket—but instead he pulled out a _fethesi_ piece, beautifully carved. A phoenix, its pinions outspread, wings stretched as if in flight, gilded. The most powerful piece in the game, able to slice through rows of enemy forces in a single motion. “Since you’re making me feel so bad, here you go. Do you know what this is?” 

Rommath understood immediately. “You bloody imp!” he said, furious and embarrassed. “You have been cheating all this time?” 

“Don’t flatter yourself. I haven’t cheated once.” He tossed the piece from one palm to the other, moving his hands so it rolled upright. “But I reserved the right to at any time. Call it a precaution. I very occasionally brought this with me. Only, you know, one game in five, maybe. And I never used it, like I said.”

“One game in five is not ‘very occasionally’.”

Bedlam shrugged. “It is in Silvermoon. You ever play with Astalor Bloodsworn? Old man Duskwither? I once caught Caradess trying to polymorph a knight into a phoenix. It caught fire and she tried to claim it was a fucking _arcane disruption_. I said, ‘Sister, the only disruption here is the fire currently racing up your eyebrows.’ Never had that problem again.”

It was true—cheating was far from unheard of in _fethesi_. Stories abounded about elven heroes doing mental battle with some villain over the board and winning the day through their ingenious duplicity.

But Bedlam was no elven hero, no cunning sorcerer, no brave princess. His wits were disturbing, not funny. “I never suspected you once.”

“Of course not.” Bedlam hopped up onto the base of the rail, balancing himself on his toes. “You think I’m stupid. Don’t splutter, I know it’s true. And anyway, three hundred pieces are way too many to keep track of, even if you have eyes like an eagle—which, by the way, you guys don’t, contrary to popular rumor. You think you know what’s happening, but it’s impossible. You lay out rows of forces like an old general. I’ve met trade princes who are more generous with their coins than you are with those fucking foot soldiers.”

  _An important lesson_. Rommath wondered what else he had failed to see. “Bedlam, the punishment for your shocking duplicity will be exile. So I decree it.”

“I was leaving anyway, so whatever.”

“Oh, were you? I’ll also be forced to tell your dozen lady friends.”

“Yeah, yeah. Sour grapes and all that. I didn’t even do anything wrong. I’m making a point.” Bedlam threw the phoenix in the air and Rommath caught it deftly. “None of you are as clever as you think. You’re blinded by your prejudices.”

“Perhaps,” Rommath was forced to say.

“And so am I, right? And so was Sassy. None of us expected your Lord Theron to have the balls to stand up to Hellscream. That’s why we need each other. Surprises make life exciting, I say.”

 _Power. It is power he wants._ But what kind? And was he acting alone? “You have designs on the council yourself? Is that it? Gorgonna’s inner circle?”

“The council?” Bedlam chuckled. “That thing? Come on, like that’ll last the winter. No way. When the warchief is gone, her council will be gone, too.”

 _When_ , he’d said. Rommath managed to govern his words. “I doubt you can afford to entice me. A lesser magister would suffice for your purposes, I’m sure.”

Bedlam didn’t answer right away. When he did, he looked thoughtful. “I don’t need lesser magisters. I need a strong friend in that war-room. Are you happy about clambering into bed with Varian Wrynn? Because I’m not. And you know who’s even less happy than I am? Every orc in Orgrimmar.”

Rommath said nothing.

“Cutting off Hellscream’s head was the worst thing that could have happened to the Horde, because you know what? Now they know that whoever sits in that chair is just flesh and blood. Very _messy_ flesh and blood, as it happens.” Bedlam sighed. “It’s mayhem, I tell you.”

“I thought your people relished a little mayhem.”

“Rude. Rommath the Rude. And racist again, excuse you. I’m seeing too much uncertainty here, and uncertainty is no friend of mine.” Bedlam gave Rommath a sad look. “I really like you, elf. You’ve been kind to me.”

“And you’ve repaid my kindness with surveillance and trickery. And scheming, of course, but more fool I for expecting different.”

Bedlam shrugged, rueful. “Don’t be like that. I’m completely aware that you’re watching my rooms night and day, and do I complain? No. I’m the first advisor of a trade prince. You don’t get that position by being nice. Come to think of it, you didn’t get your position by being nice either, I hear.”

“You hear a lot. Too much, Master Bedlam. I’m beginning to dislike it.”

“These beautiful ears,” Bedlam said, and caressed one. “You know how it is. I’m paid to know. I take pride in my work, and you’re the same. We should work together. Think on it well, my friend.” Bedlam took the phoenix from Rommath’s hand and tossed it into the garden below. It clattered loudly on the marble. “Vanquished.”

* * *

Lor’themar left early three days later, taking along Bedlam and twenty-five guards. The sky was brilliant pink, lit with clouds fine as ribbon, and already the day was warm; Rommath, fanning himself even in phoenix-silk, spared a moment’s pity for the blood knights in their gilded, lacquered plate.

(Elsia had sailed to Quel’Danas to receive Voren’thal, who was due to arrive that morning. Rommath had no doubt he would be angry to learn that his trip was for nothing. The Seer saw much. When he looked at Rommath, a man Voren’thal still sometimes called _apprentice_ in tones of deep contempt and always loudly defied, would he look through his skin and see the ocean change beneath?)

He and Halduron went to the courtyard of the Spire to bid Lor’themar and his escort farewell, a complement of their own guards striding behind them. A handful of magisters had already opened a portal to Orgrimmar, the gap large and growing larger, wide enough that three armoured elves could walk into it abreast without discomfort.

It was early night there now, dark, but in its depths Rommath made out bristling spikes, black iron walls. The capital in moonlight. It was not a tenth as beautiful as Silvermoon, but it had a certain fearsome grandeur.

“You shall hold the regency while I am gone,” Lor’themar told Halduron. “Happenings within the country I leave to the discretion of you and my other advisors, but any matters of foreign import should be brought to my attention immediately. Do nothing rash. If in doubt, wait. Remember that you are a figurehead for me, and act accordingly.”

“I understand,” Halduron said. His face was grave, but his eyes were glowing. _He will be a handful,_ Rommath thought wearily, but he also knew Lor’themar had chosen well.

“I would advise you to listen to your magi,” Lor’themar added. “They know more than you might think.”

Halduron laughed. “Advise my magi to speak a bit more nicely, and I’ll actually consider it.”

Lor’themar turned to Rommath next. “Watch the high examiner’s expedition carefully when he next heads south—I do not want any further incidents with Ironforge. They are your responsibility. I may be in contact with you shortly regarding events in Orgrimmar. We shall see.”

Rommath bowed low and did not speak, and Lor’themar turned back to the body of his escort. There was nothing of parting lovers in either of them. That was how it should be.

Yet that night, a few hours before dawn, Lor’themar had come to him in his office. Rommath had barely looked up from his notes, content to pretend that nothing had changed between them. But everything had changed, he could feel it in the air, subtle and massive as the shifts of ley lines. His heart was pounding, and he did not know where to look.

“I leave for Orgrimmar today,” Lor’themar told him. “As you probably recall.”

Was that bitterness in his voice, or just irony? Rommath did not know. He put the paper down and took off his glasses. Better to face things with pride. “I recall. The mages I picked for you will be waiting at the gates, if that’s your concern. Magistrix Vesara has their command. I trust her fully, but you may need to remind her that Liadrin does not answer to her.”

“I have the names already. A most competent bunch. I am satisfied.” Lor’themar gave a small twist of his lips that was not exactly a smile. “But the magister I wish most by my side will be staying here.”

“Is that so,” Rommath said. Despite the coolness of the air, he was annoyed to feel sweat on his back.

Lor’themar gestured at the seat before his desk. “May I…?”

 _No. Go away_. “Of course, my lord.”

If the formality displeased him, Lor’themar gave no sign. He perched on the chair, graceful yet strong. In plate he was a martial god, in these worn leathers a prince disguised.

 _I bedded this man_. The thought was horrifying, yet it filled him with odd pride. And something else. He looked away.

“I have thought about what you said the other night.” Lor’themar’s voice was matter of fact. “There was wisdom in your advice, I admit.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“I do think so.” Lor’themar’s drew his eyebrows together. “That does not mean I like it. If wishing were any use, I would wish—”

“It isn’t,” Rommath said. “Save yourself energy and heartbreak. Wishing is no use to anyone.”

“Of course. You would think after a thousand lessons in that, I would know it better.” Lor’themar was looking at him intently. “So you did not reconsider. A pity. My stay will be long.”

 _I will miss you_ , he might have been saying. Or it might have been a statement of blunt truth and nothing more.

“Long and perilous,” Rommath said. “I have two things for you.”

Lor’themar raised his eyebrows. “Is that so?”

“It is so. These are no mere baubles. Use them well.”

The first was a sheaf of paper, tied with twine, unexceptional to untrained gazes. Lor’themar took it from Rommath, his lips pursed. “Paper. I am certain it will be useful, of course.”

Diplomatic to a fault, Lord Theron. “Open your eyes and take a closer look,” Rommath said. “Appearances are deceptive. This paper is enchanted for two-way communication. You can use it to write to me over long distances almost instantaneously. Use it sparingly, because it will wear with use, and quickly.” And he told Lor’themar of his discussion with Bedlam, sparing no detail, even when Lor’themar gaped at him and made as if to interrupt. _He must know all._

When Rommath was finished, Lor’themar wiped a hand across his face. “Strange tidings.”

“Very strange. So if you need my judgment, ask. Something odd is afoot. I will keep you updated. Return the favour—but be careful. No spell is truly private. Anything you write may be seen.”

“I will. Thank you.” Lor’themar leaned over the side of his chair to drop the roll into his pack. “You said you had another thing.”

“I do,” Rommath said. The more intimate gift, and therefore more dangerous. He had kept it in his desk, wrapped in oiled cloths for protection. Now he pulled it out, holding it lightly. Why he was not sure—it was hardy, created to withstand a ranger’s abuse. “This was made by me. My gift.”

The making of it had been trying and costly. One night before Lor’themar’s departure Rommath had finally decided. Time to stop this stupid pining. The regent was his master, and Rommath must do his duty by him regardless of his own heart.

That evening, instead of retiring to his apartments, he had teleported to his private laboratory beneath the city, constructed in one of the endless abandoned vaults that snaked under Silvermoon. From his store of materials Rommath chose an oak branch, small, smooth and rigid, heavy in his hands. He had been saving it for use in a wand, but no matter. This was more important.

He wielded his knife in silence, his worktable lit by blue crystals. He shaped the wood, using magic like a razor when his hands were not strong enough, tracing the outline of the stem it would become, smoothing away the rough edges with grating stone. The bowl he formed from clay, sorcerer’s clay made to hold enchantments, moulding it between his fingers.

Rommath had no idea how long he worked. There was no natural light. After a while the rhythm of his motions overtook him, and his mind wandered strange paths. Once he caught himself repeating a single word over and over, silently, and made himself stop. _Not yet._

He did not get hungry or weary or tired. Somewhere he knew he was in the grip of magic, arcane energy flowing through him, sustaining him. Somewhere he knew he could not be one with it forever. Like sex, this unity was by its nature fleeting. It would reach its peak, and in that peak, its triumph would mean its end.

But not yet.

 _Just a little longer,_ he told himself. _I am nearly done_. But the end kept moving. When he had whittled away the stem, the bowl became flawed. He shaved fragments from the inside, rounded it further until it was as smooth as marble, without blemish.

Even when it was perfect it was plain, hopelessly plain, not fit for an elven lord. Rommath carved runes into its surface, only half conscious of which ones he chose, and hid them among flowering vines, curlicues, geometric shapes. The knife slipped; he cut his hand once, twice, three times. Blood seeped into the clay. He left it there. _For cunning and power and insight into the hearts of others_. _My own gifts. Make them his_.

The stem slid into the bowl perfectly on the first time, stuck together. Magic. He felt himself smile.

The whole thing was lacquered in dark green, sealing the two parts together. Rommath’s hand was steady as he applied it, as it always was when he performed his magic. _Gold on the stem._ Over itself he folded it, pressing enchantments into the sheets as he went. _Strength_. _Give him strength_. He did not know who was praying to, the Light or his ancestors or the gift in him that made him a mage. _Give him quick wits, and a quick tongue, and proof against lies._

When Rommath was done he had looked at the pipe, bleary-eyed but pleased. It was slender, well-formed, glossy beneath his fingers. Green and gold as the spring forests of Quel’Thalas. Strong, but graceful. Slippery as it was said the elven heart was. _But they never understood us. They were wrong_. His own heart was truer than iron.

“Be honoured,” he told it. His voice was hoarse, but the lacquer warmed beneath his fingers and the gold glowed brighter, the green growing darker against the bands. Sealing the enchantments within it, and Rommath’s blood and sweat, and all his hopeless, desperate love.

Just like the mask, something of him was trapped there, too. But it was altogether different, and he was glad to give it away.

In his office Lor’themar had unwrapped the cloth—painfully slow it seemed to Rommath, who caught himself biting his thumbnail. When at last Lor’themar pulled the pipe out he held it up so that it caught the lamplight, studying it from all angles. “It’s beautiful. You made this? You should have been a tradesman.”

That sounded almost like teasing. “It is no ordinary pipe,” Rommath said, irritated. “There are powerful spells in the wood and clay, designed to protect and aid the one who carries it. Keep it on your person. I hope you find it useful. And yes, you boor, it _is_ safe to smoke from.”

Lor’themar looked at him. Only looked—and yet, and yet.

“I hope its smoke brings you kind memories,” Rommath said, more gently.

Lor’themar brought it closer to him and turned it over in his hands. The light passed through the lacquer and illuminated the wood. When he clutched the bowl between his thumb and forefinger his nails gleamed as brightly as his rings.

“I will smoke from it often. Bloodthistle straight from Quel’Thalas.” Lor’themar gave a grim smile. “It will taste of you.”

Warmth rose within him, swift as a firestorm. _This is my curse_ , he thought. _This is the weakness I take with me, that I can never purge from myself, that I can never leave behind_. 

“And it will forever more,” Rommath told him: promise or warning or curse of his own. “I have no pity for you, Lor’themar.”

Lor’themar actually laughed. “Why does that not surprise me? Very well. I will have pity for you.”

 _Pity?_ Rommath didn’t like that. “Don’t.”

“Well, call it sympathy then, if you’d prefer.” Lor’themar was no longer smiling, but there was an uncharacteristic warmth in his gaze. “If we were normal men, we could spend the rest of our lives understanding each other better.”

"That wasn’t our fate," said Rommath, thinking of his dream.

"No." Lor’themar swallowed and looked beyond him, into the dark gardens outside Rommath’s window. "I can’t regret that. You’re correct, it is what it is, and nothing else." He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. "I must make more preparations. Will you…?"

"Wait for you. Yes." Rommath rose as well. "But not forever. Now go. And be safe."

* * *

Rommath had watched them march through the portal, disappearing like clouds in sunlight. Lor’themar had not once looked back, though Rommath had feared and prayed that he would.

_Good. He can be taught._

Now he stood before the great walls of Silvermoon, awash in blinding sunlight, surrounded on all sides by guards. The last of the portal dissipated in violet smoke, leaving only the lingering dust of magic.

Standing there, the shadows went out of Rommath like the tide. The longest day was past, but the sun would be up for hours, scattering down the rivers and silver trees and rooftops. To his back was the sea, and Quel’Danas, and the Sunwell. The land of his ancestors, and his most cherished and most hated memories.  

 _I can never leave this place now. Even if I flee a thousand leagues away, I will never leave. We inhabit each other._ The land that sustained him was filled with the graves of his kinsmen, their bones his bones and their flesh his flesh _. I am Quel’Thalas, and so is Lor’themar, and we are bound together by blood and fire, pain and joy._ The true god of his people, eternal and undying, scathed but alive, ashes and mountains and rills and dead forests. Lynxes, vipers, and phoenixes.

If the land could heal, perhaps one day so could he. For now, the summer in all its glorious burn must be enough.

 _And it is._ Rommath’s eyes stung from the sunlight and the fire’s dryness, but he was smiling. _It is enough for me._

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this on tumblr roughly ten thousand years ago. I've since left the site, but this was my biggest effort at a pairing I love, so I thought I would repost it here rather than let it be lost to the ages.
> 
> I've made the (admittedly kind of arbitrary) decision to restrict any edits to content and style as opposed to canon adherence--hence the AU tag and stuff like 'Warchief Gorgonna'. It was all speculation at the time, and has since been jossed. A girl can/could dream, right?


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